A rat-hole for a palace.
"Palace!" cried Lee with sudden animation. "A rat-hole; just a rat-hole. Only fit to be smoked out!"
"Scarce big enough, truly, to swing a cat in," laughingly acquiesced Alworth. "'Tis a mean place, as you say, with its chimneys huddled away in corners and crannies, as if they were ashamed of themselves; and the house abutting, like any common one, upon the street, without any court or avenue to't."[[1]]
[[1]] Evelyn's Diary.
"I looked to find it built somewhere upon the course itself," said Lee.
"As it should ha' been," replied the goldsmith. "Upon the very carpet, as one might say, where the sports are celebrated. My own identical words to Mr. Samuel, the—the gods forgive us!—the architect. 'But,' says he, 'Master Alworth, his majesty is bent on the purchase of this wretched old house.' And his majesty has a rare obstinate head-piece of his own, like the one they cut off his father's neck before him—heaven rest his soul! And so there's his fine house, and a mighty improper one too, in my poor judgment, for sport and pleasure, Mr. Samuel has made of it. Though, to give even him his due, you may go far before you find better turned arches than the supports of the cellars that run beneath the king's private apartments.
"Which lie to the back of the house, if I mistake not," said Lee.
"You do not. And cut off almost entirely from the rest of it, a perfect network of pillars, and arches beneath, that one might go losing one's self in, like any trapped mouse, if you didn't know the trick of them," added the goldsmith half absently, half as if amused by some suggested thought, and toying with an ancient-looking little twisted and chased bar of silver which hung upon the massive gold chain he wore round his neck. "Tho' that would scarcely be my case; for here I have an open Sesame, that, if I had a mind to't, would bring me straight into Hassan's Cave. In other words—"
Lawrence learns a secret.
"The king's own bed-chamber?" eagerly cried Lee.