Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

238 EK2KTBAAATP0N.
continuation of your own good names, or tender any kind of respect to the honor of
ladys, that you would be pleased of your own accords, to chuse rather to return from
whence you came, or go whither elswhere you will, then to imagin any rational man
wil think that your masks and vizards can be sufficient covers wherewith to hide and
palliate the deformedness of this obtrusive incivility. One of the Prince's gentlemen,
whose braines the fumes of Greek and Italian wines had a little intoxicated, laying
hold only upon the last word, all the rest having escaped both his imagination and
memory, like an empty sound which makes no impression, and most eagerly grasping
at it, like a snarling curr that in his gnarring snatcheth at the taile, echoes it, incivi-
lity ; then coming up closer to him, and saying, How now Jackanapes, whom do you
twit with incivility ? he gave him such a sound thwack over the left shoulder with his
sword, scabbard and all, that the noise thereof reached to all the corners of my Ladyes
bed-chamber ; at which the generous page, who, besides his breeding otherwayes, was
the son of a nobleman, being a little commoved and vexed at an affront so undeserv-
edly received, and barbarously given, told the Esquire who had wronged him, that if
he had but had one drop of any good blood within him, he never would have offered
to strike a gentleman that wanted a weapon wherewith to defend himself ; and that
although he was but of fourteen yeers of age, and for strength but as a springal or
stripling in regard of him, he should nevertheless, would any of those other nine gen-
tlemen, as he called them, be pleased to favour him but with the lend of a sword, take
upon him even then, and on that place, to humble his cockescomb, pull his crest a
little lower down, and make him faine, for the safety of his life, to acknowledge that
he is but a base and unworthy man. Whilst the gentleman was about to have shapen
him an answer, the Prince, being very much taken with the discretion, wit, garb, and
courage of the boy, commanded the other to silence ; and forthwith taking the speech
in hand himself, commended him very much for his loyalty to his mistris, and, for his
better ingratiating in the page's favour, presented him with a rich saphir, to shew him
but the way to my Ladyes chamber, where he vowed that, as he was a gentleman, he
would make no longer stay then barely might afford him the time to kiss her hands,
and take his leave. The sweet boy, being more incensed at the manner of that offer
of the Prince, whom he knew not, then at the discourtesie he had sustained by his
aforesaid gentleman, plainly assured him, that he might very well put up his saphir
into his pocket againe, for that all the gifts in the world should never be able to gaine
that of him, which had not ground enough in reason for perswading the grant thereof
without them.
After that the Prince and Pomponacio, for so they called the page, had thus for a
long time together debated to and againe, the reasons for and against the intended
visit, with so little success on either side, that the more artifice was used in the rheto-
rick, the less effect it had in the perswasion ; the Prince, unwilling to miss his mark,
and not having in all the quivers of his reason one shaft wherewith to hit it, resolved