As the night wore away the bonfires lighted in the public places were extinguished. Quiet and silence succeeded the tumult, the shouts, dances, and the surging waves of an excited populace rushing wildly through the streets of the capital. The ladies had deposited their borrowed charms upon the ebony and ivory of their solitary and hidden toilets. Themselves wrapped in slumber within the heavy curtains of their luxurious couches, their brocade robes and precious jewels still waited (hanging up or thrown here and there) the care of the active and busy chambermaids. Of all the sensation, triumphs, and irresistible charms there was left nothing but the wreck, disorder, and faded flowers. And thus passes everything appertaining to man. Beauty lives but a day; an hour even may behold it withered and cut down.
The sun had scarcely risen when a number of carts, mounted by vigilant upholsterers, were driven up, in order to remove the scaffolds, the triumphal arches, and strip them of their soiled drapery and withered garlands. The avenues of the palace were deserted, and not a courtier had yet appeared. One man, however, all alone, slowly surveyed the superb apartments of the Tower. He paused successively before each panel of tapestry, examining them in all their details, or he took from their places the large
chairs with curved backs, that he might inspect them more closely; he then consulted a great memorandum-book he held in his hand.
“Ah! Master Cloth, you are not to be cheated. It is not possible that Signor Ludovico Bonvisi has sold you this velvet at six angels the piece; and six hundred pieces more, do you say? But I will show you I am not so easily duped as you would think by the thieving merchants of my good city. The rascals understand very well how to manage their affairs; but we will also manage to clip some of their wings.”
And Henry VIII. gave a stroke with his penknife through the column he wished to diminish; it was in this way he made his additions.
“The devil! This violet carpet covering the courtyard is enormously dear.
“Mistress Anne, your reception here has ruined me. We must find some means of making all this up. These women are full of whims, and of very dear whims too. A wife is a most ruinous thing; everything is ruinous. They cannot move without spending money. It has been necessary to give enormous sums right and left—to doctors of universities, to Parliament; and all that is an entire loss, for they will clamor none the less loudly. There are men in Parliament who will sell themselves, and yet
they will ridicule me just as much as the others, in order to appear independent. Verily, it is terror alone that can be used to advantage; with one hand she replenishes the purse, while with the other she at the same time executes my commands.
“This fringe is only an inch wide; it cannot weigh as much as they say it does here. I counted on the rest of the cardinal’s money; but nothing—he had not a penny, or at any rate he has been able to hide his pieces from me, so that I could not find a trace of them.
“Northumberland has written me there was nothing at Cawood but a box, where he found, carefully tied up in a little sack of red linen, a hair shirt and a discipline, which have doubtless served our friend Wolsey to expiate the sins I have made him commit.” And as these reflections were passing through his mind, the king experienced a very disagreeable sensation at the sight of a man dressed in black, who approached him on tiptoe. Henry VIII. did not at all like being surprised in his paroxysms of suspicion and avarice.