They were sought for, but they were not to be found. They had retreated, leaving their instruments—a circumstance which seemed to bear hard on the Duke of Buckingham, their patron.
Hasty preparations were made to provide resistance to any effort of despair which the supposed conspirators might be driven to; and in the meanwhile, the King, withdrawing with Arlington, Ormond, and a few other counsellors, into the cabinet where the Countess of Derby had had her audience, resumed the examination of the little discoverer. His declaration, though singular, was quite coherent; the strain of romance intermingled with it, being in fact a part of his character, which often gained him the fate of being laughed at, when he would otherwise have been pitied, or even esteemed.
He commenced with a flourish about his sufferings for the Plot, which the impatience of Ormond would have cut short, had not the King reminded his Grace, that a top, when it is not flogged, must needs go down of itself at the end of a definite time, while the application of the whip may keep it up for hours.
Geoffrey Hudson was, therefore, allowed to exhaust himself on the subject of his prison-house, which he informed the King was not without a beam of light—an emanation of loveliness—a mortal angel—quick of step and beautiful of eye, who had more than once visited his confinement with words of cheering and comfort.
“By my faith,” said the King, “they fare better in Newgate than I was aware of. Who would have thought of the little gentleman being solaced with female society in such a place?”
“I pray your Majesty,” said the dwarf, after the manner of a solemn protest, “to understand nothing amiss. My devotion to this fair creature is rather like what we poor Catholics pay to the blessed saints, than mixed with any grosser quality. Indeed, she seems rather a sylphid of the Rosicrucian system, than aught more carnal; being slighter, lighter, and less than the females of common life, who have something of that coarseness of make which is doubtless derived from the sinful and gigantic race of the antediluvians.”
“Well, say on, man,” quoth Charles. “Didst thou not discover this sylph to be a mere mortal wench after all?”
“Who?—I, my liege?—Oh, fie!”
“Nay, little gentleman, do not be so particularly scandalised,” said the King; “I promise you I suspect you of no audacity of gallantry.”
“Time wears fast,” said the Duke of Ormond impatiently, and looking at his watch. “Chiffinch hath been gone ten minutes, and ten minutes will bring him back.”