Elizabeth rode on, her hand upon the pommel of the saddle. So she rode for a full half-hour, and came back to her palace. But she raised not her gloved right hand above the pommel, and she dismounted with exceeding care.
That night the man who cared for the horse died secretly, as had done his master, with the Queen’s glove pressed to his nostrils by one whom Cecil could trust. And the matter was hidden from the court and the people; for it was given out that Melvill’s friend had died of some heart trouble.
[XV]
IT seemed an unspeakable smallness in a man of such high place in the state, whose hand had tied and untied myriad knots of political and court intrigue, that he should stoop to a game which any pettifogging hanger-on might play—and reap scorn in the playing. By insidious arts, Leicester had in his day turned the Queen’s mind to his own will; had foiled the diplomacy of the Spaniard, the German, and the Gaul; had by subterranean means checkmated the designs of the Medici; had traced his way through plot and counter-plot, hated by most, loved by none save, maybe, his royal mistress, to whom he was now more a custom than a beloved friend. Year upon year he had built up his influence. None had championed him save himself, and even from the consequences of rashness and folly he had risen to a still higher place in the kingdom. But such as Leicester are ever at last a sacrifice to the laborious means by which they achieve their greatest ends—means contemptible and small.
To the great intriguers every little detail, every commonplace insignificance is used—and must be used by them alone—to further their dark causes. They cannot trust their projects to brave lieutenants, to faithful subordinates. They cannot say, “Here is the end; this is the work to be done; upon your shoulders be the burden!” They must “stoop to conquer.” Every miserable detail becomes of moment, until by-and-by the art of intrigue and conspiracy begins to lose proportion in their minds. The detail has ever been so important, conspiracy so much second nature, that they must needs be intriguing and conspiring when the occasion is trifling and the end negligible.
To all intriguers life has lost romance; there is no poem left in nature; no ideal, personal, public, or national, detains them in its wholesome influence; no great purpose allures them; they have no causes for which to die—save themselves. They are so honeycombed with insincerity and the vice of thought that by-and-by all colors are as one, all pathways the same; because, whichever hue of light breaks upon their world they see it through the gray-cloaked mist of falsehood; and whether the path be good or bad they would still walk in it crookedly. How many men and women Leicester had tracked or lured to their doom; over how many men and women he had stepped to his place of power, history speaks not carefully; but the traces of his deeds run through a thousand archives, and they suggest plentiful sacrifices to a subverted character.