BOOK THE SECOND
MEN’S BUSINESS
CHAPTER I
OPINIONS OF FRENCH PARIS UPON SOME LATE EVENTS
Nicholas the lacquey, whom they call ‘French Paris,’ can neither read nor write, nor cipher save with notches in a wand; but he has travelled much, and in shrewd company; and has seen things—whatever men may do—of interest moral and otherwise. And whether he work his sum by aid of his not over-orderly notches, or upon his not over-scrupulous fingers, the dog can infer; he will get the quotient just, and present it you in divers tongues, with divers analogies drawn from his knowledge of affairs: France, England, the Low Countries, Upper Italy, the Debateable Land—from one, any, or all, French Paris can pick his case in point. Therefore, his thoughts upon events in Scotland, both those which led to his coming thither in the train of my Lord Bothwell, his master, and those which followed hard upon it, should be worth having, if by means of a joke and a crown-piece one could get at them.
You may see the man, if you will, lounging any afternoon away with his fellows on the cawsey—by the Market Cross, in the parvise of Saint Giles’s, by the big house at the head of Peebles Wynd (‘late my Lord of Moray’s,’ he will tell you with a wink), or, best of all, in the forecourt of Holyrood—holding his master’s cloak upon his arm. He is to be known at once by the clove carnation or sprig of rosemary in his mouth, and by his way of looking Scotchwomen in their faces with that mixture of impudence and naïveté which his nation lends her sons. Being whose son he is, he will be a smooth-chinned, lithe young man, passably vicious, and pale with it; grey in the eye, dressed finely in a good shirt, good jacket and breeches. But for certain these two last will not meet; the snowy lawn will force itself between, and, like a vow of continence, sunder two loves. Paris will be tender of his waist. He will look at all women as they pass, not with reverence (as if they were a holier kind of flesh), but rather, like his namesake, as if he held the apple weighing in his hand. Seems to have no eye for men—will tell you, if you ask him of them, that there are none in Scotland but his master and Mr. Knox; and yet can judge them quicker than any one. It was he who said of the King, having seen him but once, after supper, at Stirling: ‘This young man fuddles himself to brave out his failure. He is frigid—wants a sex.’ And of the Queen, on the same short acquaintance, but helped by hearsay: ‘She had been so long the pet of women that she thought herself safe with any man. But now she knows that it takes more than a cod-piece to make a man. Trust Paris.’ Trust Paris! A crown will purchase the rogue, and yet he has a kind of faithfulness. He will endure enormously for his master’s sake, shun no fatigues, wince at no pain, consider no shame—to be sure, he has none—blink at few perils. Talk to him, having slipped in your crown, he will be frank. He will tell you of his master.
A quick word of thanks, whistled off into the air, will introduce him to the broad piece. He will give it a flick in the air, catch it as it comes down, rattle it in his hollowed palm, with a grin into your face. ‘This is the upright servant, this pretty knave,’ he will say of his coin. ‘For, look you, sir, this white-faced, thin courtier is the one in all the world whom you need not buy for more than his value. God of Gods, if my master thought fully of it he would be just such another. Because it is as plain as a monk’s lullaby that, if you need not give more for him than he is worth, you cannot give less!’
His master, you have been told, is the great Earl of Bothwell, now Lord Admiral of Scotland, Lieutenant-General of the East, West, and Middle Marches, and right hand of the Queen’s Majesty. How is the story of so high a man involved in your crown-piece? Why, thus.