“We should have sent him back to the north again,” whispered one English nobleman.
“At least,” said another, in the same inaudible tone, “we should have had a MAN to our sovereign, though he were but a Scotsman.”
“And now, my young springald,” said the king to Lord Glenvarloch, “where have you been spending your calf-time?”
“At Leyden, of late, may it please your Majesty,” answered Lord Nigel.
“Aha! a scholar,” said the king; “and, by my saul, a modest and ingenuous youth, that hath not forgotten how to blush, like most of our travelled Monsieurs. We will treat him conformably.”
Then drawing himself up, coughing slightly, and looking around him with the conscious importance of superior learning, while all the courtiers who understood, or understood not, Latin, pressed eagerly forward to listen, the sapient monarch prosecuted his inquiries as follows:—
“Hem! hem! salve bis, quaterque salve, glenvarlochides noster! Nuperumne ab lugduno batavorum britanniam rediisti?”
The young nobleman replied, bowing low—
“Imo, rex augustissime—biennium fere apud lugdunenses Moratus sum.”
James proceeded—