I overtook this quaint rider as he rode alone, my active feet being more than a match for the shaky limbs of that mean beast he sat upon, and, coming alongside, observed him unnoticed for a minute. Truly as quaint a fellow-traveler as you could meet! His head was sunk, and his grizzled white beard fell over his chest: his eyes were fixed in vacant stare on some vision of the future; and his lips moved tremulously now and again as the thoughts of his mind escaped unheeded from between them. Was he poet? Was he seer? Was it a black past or a red, rosy future the old fellow babbled of? Jove! I was not in very good kind myself, and I fancy I had read now and again, in the wonder of those who saw me, that my face had a tale to tell. But, by the great gods! I was neat and pretty-pied beside this most rusty gentleman; my face was as void as a curd-fed bumpkin’s, compared to those eloquently absent eyes, that fine, mean profile, there, in the slouch of the big hat, and those busy lips!
“Good-morning, Sir!” I said; and as the old man looked up with a start and saw me, a stranger, walking by his side, all the fervor and the fancy died from off his face, the fine features shut upon themselves; and there he was, the meanest, shallowest, most paltry-looking of old rogues that had ever pulled off a cap to his equal!
He returned my first light questionings with a sullen suspicion, which gradually thawed, however, as his keen scrutiny took, apparently, reassuring stock of my face and figure, and we spoke, as fellow-travelers will, for a few moments on the roads, the weather, and the prospect of the skies. Then I asked him, with small expectation of much advantage in his answer, “which was the best way to Court.”
“There are many ways, my son,” he said. “You may get there because of extreme virtue, or on the introduction of peculiar wickedness.”
“Ah! but I meant otherwise——”
“Shining wisdom, they say, brings a man to Court—or should. And, God knows, there is no place like Court for folly! If thou art very beautiful thou may come to it, and if thou art as ugly as hell they will have thee for a laughing-stock and nine-days’ wonder. Anaximander went to Court because he was so wise, and Anaxippus because he was so foolish; Diphilus because he was so slow in penmanship, and Antimachus because he wrote so much and swift. Ah, friend! many are the ways. Polypemon lived by plunder, and, because he was the cruelest thief that ever stripped a wanderer by green Cephisus, he came under the notice of kings and gods; ay, and Clytius is famous because he was so faithful; and the patriotic Codrus because he bared his bosom to the foe, and Spendius for a hundred treacheries, and——”
“No! no!” I cried, “no more, Sir, I entreat. I did not mean to play footpad to thy capacious memory, and rob your mind of all these just comparisons, but only to ask, in ordinary material manner, which was the best way to the palace, which the nearest road, the safest footpath for a hasty stranger to our good Queen’s footstool. I have a Royal script to deliver to her.”
“What, is it the Queen you want to see? Why, I am bound that road myself, and in a few minutes I will show you the pennons glancing among the trees where they be camped.”
“Where they be camped?” I exclaimed in wonder. “I thought that was many a mile from here—in fact, Sir, in the great city itself, and yet you say a few minutes will show us the Royal tents.”
“Oh, what a blessed thing are youthful legs! And were you off to distant Westminster like that, good fellow, ‘to see the Queen,’ forsooth, with nothing in thy wallet, and as little in thy head?” And the old man eyed me under his slouching cap with a mixture of derision and strange curiosity.