LORD B. (with an airy flourish of courtly disdain). Oh, yes! He has been—speaking.
QUEEN. In Edinburgh, quite lately.
LORD B. And in more other places than I can count. Speaking—speaking—
speaking. But I have to confess, Madam, that I have not read his speeches.
They are composed for brains which can find more leisure than yours,
Madam—or mine.
QUEEN. I have read some of them.
LORD B. Your Majesty does him great honour—and yourself some inconvenience, I fear. Those speeches, so great a strain to understand, or even to listen to—my hard duty for now some forty years—are a far greater strain to read.
QUEEN. They annoy me intensely. I have no patience with him!
LORD B. Pardon me, Madam; if you have read one of his speeches, your patience has been extraordinary.
QUEEN. Can't you stop it?
LORD B. Stop?—stop what, Madam? Niagara, the Flood? That which has no beginning, no limit, has also no end: till, by the operation of nature, it runs dry.
QUEEN. But, surely, he should be stopped when he speaks on matters which may, any day, bring us into war!