“What signifies what I desired, man? when a wise man is with fules and bairns, he maun e'en play at the chucks. But you should have had mair sense and consideration than to gie Babie Charles and Steenie their ain gate; they wad hae floored the very rooms wi' silver, and I wonder they didna.”
George Heriot bowed, and said no more. He knew his master too well to vindicate himself otherwise than by a distant allusion to his order; and James, with whom economy was only a transient and momentary twinge of conscience, became immediately afterwards desirous to see the piece of plate which the goldsmith proposed to exhibit, and dispatched Maxwell to bring it to his presence. In the meantime he demanded of the citizen whence he had procured it.
“From Italy, may it please your Majesty,” replied Heriot.
“It has naething in it tending to papistrie?” said the king, looking graver than his wont.
“Surely not, please your Majesty,” said Heriot; “I were not wise to bring any thing to your presence that had the mark of the beast.”
“You would be the mair beast yourself to do so,” said the king; “it is weel kend that I wrestled wi' Dagon in my youth, and smote him on the groundsill of his own temple; a gude evidence that I should be in time called, however unworthy, the Defender of the Faith.—But here comes Maxwell, bending under his burden, like the Golden Ass of Apuleius.”
Heriot hastened to relieve the usher, and to place the embossed salver, for such it was, and of extraordinary dimensions, in a light favourable for his Majesty's viewing the sculpture.
“Saul of my body, man,” said the king, “it is a curious piece, and, as I think, fit for a king's chalmer; and the subject, as you say, Master George, vera adequate and beseeming—being, as I see, the judgment of Solomon—a prince in whose paths it weel becomes a' leeving monarchs to walk with emulation.”
“But whose footsteps,” said Maxwell, “only one of them—if a subject may say so much—hath ever overtaken.”
“Haud your tongue for a fause fleeching loon!” said the king, but with a smile on his face that showed the flattery had done its part. “Look at the bonny piece of workmanship, and haud your clavering tongue.—And whase handiwork may it be, Geordie?”