"Which I hope the thoughtlessness of their King will not induce you to change. I trust you have too much good sense, Mr. Montagu, to feel offended with what you may call the frivolity of my manner. My heart, I hope, is good, though I own even I cannot say much in favour of my head. I am a laughing philosopher however, a sort of Democritus the second; and finding it more agreeable to laugh than cry, I generally try to extract amusement from every thing that happens to fall in my way. We shall soon know each other better, and so now, as doubtless you may wish for repose after the fatigues you have undergone, you will perhaps like to retire to the tent prepared for you."
The doctor and Edric willingly assented and repaired to their new abode, completely puzzled by what seemed to them the extraordinary and inconsistent character of the King.
Under this gay, laughing exterior, however, Roderic hid a sound penetrating mind, and a firm determined spirit; whilst, though no one enjoyed more to ridicule occasionally the foibles of his subjects, no one knew better how to check them, and bring them back instantly to their proper stations, if they ventured a hair's breadth beyond the limits he prescribed to them. He had thus the art to make himself feared as well as loved, and to rule his subjects despotically, though he never spoke to them without a smile.
Such as I have described him, it may be easily imagined Roderick was not long in winning the affections of his new friends, and he, in his turn, was equally delighted with them. The noble, generous, and inquiring spirit of Edric exactly accorded with his own; and the follies of the learned doctor afforded him never-ceasing amusement, whilst Edric, delighted to meet with a companion who could understand and sympathize with his feelings, felt happier than he had been for years; and the learned doctor, proud of being admitted to the intimacy of such a man as Roderick, declared all his troubles were repaid, and that he now considered himself as the most fortunate of mortals.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
The Spanish nobility were daily collecting round the Irish King. To one of the most distinguished of these, the Duke of Medina Celina, Roderick was particularly anxious to introduce Edric. For this purpose, therefore, as soon as the army of Roderick returned to his head quarters at Cadiz, where the duke had remained, the friends went together to pay him a visit.
Edric was exceedingly interested by this call. The duke's family consisted only of himself and his grand-daughter, the Princess Zoe, but the appearance of both was excessively striking. The duke was a blind old man with white flowing hair and a long silvery beard, clad with almost patriarchal simplicity; whilst Zoe, who sate closely by his side, and seemed devoted to his comfort, was beauty itself. Exquisitely lovely, however, as her features were, they excited rather pain than pleasure in the mind of the beholder, from their excessive paleness. Her dress was simple: a robe of black silk fitted tight to her slender shape, and her jet black hair was simply braided on her forehead, and confined in a net behind.
When she saw the strangers, a slight blush stained the usual alabaster fairness of her complexion, and a trifling agitation was visible in her manner. It was but for an instant, however, that this glowing tint suffused her pallid cheeks, or that her fine features betrayed agitation. Her usual calm dignity of expression was immediately re-assumed, and her countenance regained its marble whiteness. There was, indeed, something very singular in the whole countenance of this young beauty, for, notwithstanding the exquisite loveliness of her features, her charms were rather those of a statue than of a human being. Her fine features were strictly Grecian and perfectly regular, but they were always fixed in one unvarying expression; whilst her large black eyes fringed with long silken eyelashes, and her glossy raven hair, contrasted strangely with the spotless fairness of her complexion; the whole gave her the air of some unearthly visitant from the tomb.
Zoe had been unfortunate from her birth. Her mother having accompanied the old duke upon an embassy to Constantinople, had happened to please the fancy of the reigning Emperor so forcibly, that, contrary to the advice of his counsellors, he had married her. Disproportioned marriages, however, are seldom happy ones: and that of the parents of Zoe formed no exception to the general rule. The Emperor soon repented his rashness, and, becoming tired of his wife, treated her with coldness and neglect; whilst she, far removed from all her former friends, and finding herself despised by the man for whose sake she had sacrificed every thing, lingered a few years and then died unheeded and forlorn, leaving only the hapless Zoe to lament her fate.