Henry Howard now approached the throne of the royal pair, and with beaming looks, with animated countenance, with a voice trembling with emotion, he read his love-song to the fair Geraldine. A murmur of applause arose when he had read his first sonnet. The king only looked gloomily, with fixed eyes; the queen alone remained uninterested and cold.
“She is a complete actress,” thought Henry Howard, in the madness of his pain. “Not a muscle of her face stirs; and yet this sonnet must remind her of the fairest and most sacred moment of our love.”
The queen remained unmoved and cold. But had Henry Howard looked at Lady Jane Douglas, he would have seen how she turned pale and blushed; how she smiled with rapture, and how, nevertheless, her eyes filled with tears.
Earl Surrey, however, saw nothing but the queen; and the sight of her made him tremble with rage and pain. His eyes darted lightning: his countenance glowed with passion; his whole being was in desperate, enthusiastic excitement. At that moment he would have gladly breathed out his life at Geraldine’s feet, if she would only recognize him—if she would only have the courage to call him her beloved.
But her smiling calmness, her friendly coolness, brought him to despair.
He crumpled the paper in his hand; the letters danced before his eyes; he could read no more.
But he would not remain, mute, either. Like the dying swan, he would breathe out his pain in a last song, and give sound and words to his despair and his agony. He could no longer read; but he improvised.
Like a glowing stream of lava, the words flowed from his lips; in fiery dithyrambic, in impassioned hymns, he poured forth his love and pain. The genius of poesy hovered over him and lighted up his noble and thoughtful brow.
He was radiantly beautiful in his enthusiasm; and even the queen felt herself carried away by his words. His plaints of love, his longing pains, his rapture and his sad fancies, found an echo in her heart. She understood him; for she felt the same joy, the same sorrow and the same rapture; only she did not feel all this for him.
But, as we have said, he enchanted her; the current of his passion carried her away. She wept at his laments; she smiled at his hymns of joy.