“There is a secret instinct in this impatience,” observed the Doctor, craftily; “for, according to tradition, the Fair Rosamond had much resemblance to your Majesty, though, of course, in an inferior style.”
“Let us judge—let us judge,” replied the Queen, hastily; “but from the moment she appears, Sir Sydney, I request of you to observe her minutely, that we may have her description, if she is worth it.” This order being given, and some little conjuration made, as Rosamond was only a short distance from London, she made her appearance in a second. Even at the door, her beauty charmed every one, but as she advanced she enchanted them; and when she stopped to be gazed at, the admiration of the company, with difficulty restrained to signs and looks, exhibited their high approbation of the taste of Henry II. Nothing could exceed the simplicity of her dress—and yet in that simplicity she effaced the splendours of day—at least to the spectators. She waited before them a long time—much longer than the others had done; and as if aware of the command the Queen had given, she turned especially towards Sydney, looking at him with an expressive smile. But she must go at last; and when she was gone,—“My lord,” said the Queen, “what a pretty creature! I never saw anything so charming in my life. What a figure! what dignity without affectation! what brilliancy without artifice!—and it is said that I resemble her. My lord of Essex, what think you?” My lord thought, would to Heaven you did; I would give the best steed in my stable that you had even an ugly likeness to her. But he said, “Your majesty has but to make the tour of the gallery in her green robe and primrose petticoat, and if our magician himself would not mistake you for her, count me the greatest —— of your three kingdoms.”
During all this flattery with which the favourite charmed the ears of the good Queen, the poet Sydney, pencil in hand, was sketching the vision of the Fair Rosamond.
Her Majesty then commanded it should be read, and when she heard it, pronounced it very clever: but as it was a real impromptu, not one of those born long before, and was written for a particular audience, as a picture is painted for a particular light—we think it but justice to the celebrated author not to draw his lines from the venerable antiquity in which they rest, even if we had the MSS. copy; but we have not—which at once finishes the business.
After the reading, they deliberated on the next that should succeed Rosamond. The enchanter, still of opinion that they need not leave England when beauty was the object in question, proposed the famous Countess of Salisbury, who gave rise to the institution of the Garter. The idea was approved of by the Queen, and particularly agreeable to the courtiers, as they wished to see if the cause were worthy of the effect,—i.e., the leg of the garter; but her Majesty declared that she should particularly like a second sight of her lovely resemblance, the Fair Rosamond. The Doctor vowed that the affair was next to impracticable in the order of conjuration,—the recall of a phantom not depending on the powers submitted to the first enchantments. But the more he declared against it, the more the Queen insisted, until he was obliged at last to submit, but with the information that, if Rosamond should return, it would not be by the way in which she had entered or retired already, and that they had best take care of themselves, as he could answer for no one.
The Queen, as we have elsewhere observed, knew not what fear was—and the two courtiers were now a little reassured on the subject of apparitions. The Doctor then set about accomplishing the Queen’s wishes. Never had conjuration cost him so much trouble; and after a thousand grimaces and contortions, neither pretty nor polite, he flung his book into the middle of the gallery, went three times round it on his hands and feet, then made the tree against the wall, head down and heels up; but nothing appearing, he had recourse to the last and most powerful of his spells. What that was must remain for ever a mystery, for certain reasons; but he wound it up by three times summoning with a sonorous voice—“Rosamond! Rosamond! Rosamond!” At the last of these magic cries, the grand window burst open with the sudden crash of a tempest, and through it descended the lovely Rosamond into the middle of the room.
The Doctor was in a cold sweat, and while he dried himself, the Queen, who thought her fair visitant a thousand times the fairer for the additional difficulty in procuring this second sight, for once let her prudence sleep, and, in a transport of enthusiasm, stepping out of her circle with open arms, cried out, “My dear likeness!” No sooner was the word out, than a violent clap of thunder shook the whole palace; a black vapour filled the gallery, and a train of little fantastic lightnings serpentined to the right and left in the dazzled eyes of the company.
When the obscurity was a little dissipated, they saw the magician, with his four limbs in air, foaming like a wild boar, his cap here, his wig there—in short, by no means an object of either the sublime or beautiful. But though he came off the worst, yet no one in the adventure escaped quite clear, except Rosamond. The lightning burned away my Lord of Essex’s right brow; Sir Sidney lost the left mustachio; her majesty’s head-dress smelt villanously of the sulphur, and her hoop-petticoat was so puckered up with the scorching, that it was ordered to be preserved among the royal draperies, as a warning, to all maids of honour to come, against curiosity.