"Do not be astonished at any concession I may make," he wrote to the Marquess, "for it will come to nothing, and heed no public commands I may give, until you hear that I am free; but keep alive with all vigour the spirit of loyalty in Ireland."
To his wife he wrote—"The great concessions I have made to-day were merely in order to my escape."
When these hasty letters, in the writing of which the King seemed to relieve some of the feelings that he had had to contain in his bosom during the long hours of his conference with the representatives of Parliament, were finished and locked into the secret drawers of the King's desk, Lord Digby lit the candles and closed the shutters over the mournful, wet, misty night.
"I would, sir," he said, with a little shudder, "that we were well out of this cursed island."
Charles rose from the little desk; his eyes were brilliant, his mouth hardly set under the delicate moustaches.
"If I were once in Ireland," he said, "fortune would look differently on me."
He had always been so—always, under the most cruel mortification hopeful, trustful in some expedient. Ever since his overthrow he had trusted first in Rupert and Montrose, then in the foreign armies the Queen would raise, then in Hamilton, then in the divisions of his enemies, and now in Rupert and his elusive ships.
Lord Digby could not fail to see this incurable hopefulness of his master, nor to argue ill from it; but he was himself light-spirited and fantastical, and his remonstrances were few and faint.
Yet he hazarded one now.
"As the army is deadly disloyal and much raised up of late, and as the Parliament is your one sure refuge from it, sir, would it not be wiser to observe this treaty, at least for a while?"