“You are stricken in years, my lord,” said his daughter; “you are speaking foolishly. Go you to bed, like a wise old man; the leech shall bleed you; and that fat fellow who is swollen like a goose at Michaelmas, shall read you a psalm.”
“Ods mud!” cried her parent, spluttering himself into a state of incoherency, “will nobody pull her down? I ask you, will nobody pull her down? Will none obey me? Must I do it personally? Ods unicorns! must I correct her with mine own indignation?”
Instead of advancing, however, to do his own business, the duke was content to whine and complain, like an old dog that is wishful to bite, yet is unable. And it was most curious to watch this foiled grandee look first at Don Luiz, his right hand, and then at the soldiers of his guard. But these showed no disposition to help him in his pass. None had the desire to offer violence to their youthful mistress, who had so much more of valour than their aged master.
“Luiz,” cried the duke, “do you fetch that foreign man, that Sirrah Richard Red Dragon. He is the man to serve us. Ods myself! he will have no fear of three halfpence worth of bib and tucker, with a bit of steel to give it effrontery. Ods my good heart! he will not fear a minx and a wanton that is so rude as any jackanapes. Do you tell him to bring his stick along with him, Luiz; I will have her flogged in public for this. Ods my good soul! Luiz, I never was in such a passion before.”
Don Luiz went forth on his new errand with great alacrity.
“You are as weak as a chewed straw, my lord,” said little insolent madam. “Get you to your bed, like a good old man, and I will send you a priest with a fresh, young voice, and he shall sing you an anthem. You have no more valiancy than an old milch cow, my lord. You are as feeble as a gnat under a willow in a wet November. It is well I am come home. I believe your lordship’s grace would deliver up this house to the Castilian the first time he set his hand upon your lattice.”
It is hard to know what reply the duke would have offered to such an onslaught upon his old age, made by one of his own kith. But before he could frame it, in whatever it might consist, that huge man the Englishman entered the room with his sword drawn and snuffing like a tiger.
“If I am upon an errand of good steel,” he said, coming in with a swagger that filled the whole apartment, “I hope there is a proper valiance in mine adversaries, for I am in a humour to cut and thrust, to hack and mutilate.”
“Sirrah Richard Red Dragon,” said the duke, with most perfect dignity, “I would have you pull down that proud hulks off the table there, and I would have you chastise her with severity; and further I would have you seize those two malefactors by whom she is encompassed, and I would have you hang them within a quarter of an hour.”
Sir Richard Pendragon made one or two ferocious passes with his sword before laying this order into execution. He then cast his eyes, which were rolling in a truly terrible manner, towards where we held our ground. But instead of making the horrible onslaught we had been led to expect, he opened his mouth in astonishment. He then turned to gaze at the duke, who stood the picture of calm pride and dignity, and then back again to the no less calm and prideful countess.