Immediately Philip Sidney's manner changed. Not even from the Queen could he bear to have this sore wound touched. He rose from his half-kneeling, half-sitting position at the Queen's feet, and said in a grave voice,—
'I await your commands, Madam, which I shall hold sacred to my latest breath, but pardon me if I beseech your Highness to refrain from the mention of one whom I have lost by my own blind folly, and so made shipwreck.'
'Tut, tut, Philip; this is vain talking for my fine scholar and statesman. Shipwreck, forsooth! Nay, your craft shall sail with flying colours yet. But I hear the voices of Burleigh and Leicester in the ante-chamber! Your good uncle is like to die of jealousy; if he finds I am closeted with you he will come to the Council in an ill temper, and rouse the lion in me. So, farewell till the evening, when I command your presence at the banquet.'
'Madam, there is yet one word I would say. It is upon my good father's affairs.'
'What now? Henry Sidney is always complaining—no money, no favour! As to the money, he has spent a goodly sum in Ireland, and yet cries out for more, and would fain go thither again, and take you with him, to squander more coin.'
'I have no desire, Madam, either for him to go to Ireland or for myself to accompany him. But I pray you to consider how small a pittance he receives as Lord President of Wales. It is ever a struggle for my mother to maintain the dignity of your representative there. She is wearing out her life in a vain effort, and you, Madam, surely know that her nature is noble, and that she seeks only to promote the welfare of others.'
'Ay! Mary Sidney is well enough. We will think over the matter. Command her to come to Court for this Whitsuntide, there is a chamber at her service. Now, I must to business. Stay if it suits you; you have more wits than all the rest of us put together. Yes, that is Leicester's step and voice.'
Philip knew better than to remain without express invitation to do so from his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. It was, perhaps, only natural that the elder man should be jealous of the younger, who had, when scarcely four-and-twenty, already gained a reputation for statesmanship at home and abroad. Brilliant as Leicester was, he was secretly conscious that there were heights which he had failed to reach, and that his nephew, Philip Sidney, had won a place in the favour of his sovereign, which even the honest protest he had made against this marriage with the Duke of Anjou had failed to destroy; a high place also in the esteem of the world by the purity of his life and the nobleness of a nature which commended itself alike to gentle and simple; while he had the reputation of a true knight and brave soldier, pure, and without reproach, as well as a scholar versed in the literature of other countries, and foremost himself amongst the scholars and poets of the day.
Philip Sidney left the presence-chamber by another door as his uncle and Lord Burleigh entered it, and went to his own apartments, where he expected to meet some friends, and discuss with them topics more interesting and profitable than the intrigues of the Court and the Queen's matrimonial projects.
Edmund Spenser's dedication to the Shepherd's Calendar is well known, and there can be no doubt that he owed much to Sidney's discriminating patronage.