“Evelina says she’s being poisoned,” cried Clara, “and that the people say that it would be no great matter if she was, for then the people would have to choose a Queen for themselves, and they might make what terms they pleased with her.”
An awkward pause followed this speech, which no one seemed inclined to break, till Clara exclaimed, “Dear me! what a pretty horse my cousin Edmund rides!”
“I think that’s a purtier comes afther him,” said Father Murphy.
“What, that one with his head hanging down and his mane sweeping the ground?” asked Mrs. Russel.
“Yes.—And sure, it’s a very purty young man that walks by the side of him; so he is,” replied Father Murphy.
“His hands are chained, so you see he is a prisoner;” observed Abelard. Mr. Montagu, who had relapsed into one of his fits of abstraction: “I wonder what can bring him there!”
“Sure, and it’s a barbarous custom that of putthing chains about the hands of the prisoners,” said Father Murphy, “as if it was not bad enough to be a prisoner without looking like one.”
“Poor fellow!” cried Clara, “I should like to go and let him loose. He looks very melancholy!”
“How great Lord Edmund looks!” exclaimed Mrs. Russel: “I declare if he were a real king he couldn’t have a grander appearance. And then to see the poor old gentleman his father, sitting there hand-in-hand with my master. I declare it does my heart good to look at them!”
Whilst the occupiers of the balloons were thus enjoying the splendid scene below them, the pleasure of the exalted personages they admired, had not been inferior to their own. The Duke in particular, seemed almost out of his senses with joy. His impatience during the whole procession from London had been excessive; and the moment he saw Edmund, he rubbed his hands in ecstasy, and jumping up in his seat almost overturned Sir Ambrose, who was also bending forward eagerly gazing upon his son.
“There! there he is!” cried the Duke. “See how handsome he looks! Oh the young rogue! there’ll be many a heart lost today, I warrant me! Look at him, how the colour comes into his cheeks when the Queen speaks to him! Now he helps her on her horse—and now see, he’s looking round for us! There I caught his eye—Look, Sir Ambrose! don’t you see him?—Surely you aren’t crying, my old friend? Why you’ll make me as great a fool as yourself—God bless him! I am sure I don’t know anything we have to cry at; but we are two old simpletons.”
Father Morris, who had joined the procession of monks, was almost as much affected as his patron. Indeed his affection for Edmund seemed the only human passion remaining in his ascetic breast. Cold even to frigidity in his exterior, Father Morris seemed to regard the scenes passing around him but as the moving figures of a magic lantern, which glittered for a moment in glowing colours, and then vanished into darkness, leaving no trace behind:—whilst he, unmoved as the wall over which the gaudy but shadowy pageant had passed, saw them alternately vanish and reappear without the slightest emotion being excited in his mind. Under this statue-like appearance, however, Father Morris concealed passions as terrific as those which might be supposed to throb in the breast of a demon: though never did his self-command seem relaxed for a moment, but when the interests of Edmund were in question. On the present occasion, joy swelled in his bosom almost to suffocation, as he raised his eyes to Heaven, and, wringing his hands together, exclaimed, “Oh! it is too—too much!”
There is something indescribably affecting in seeing strong emotion expressed by those who are generally calm and unimpassioned; thus Sir Ambrose, by whom this burst of feeling was quite unexpected, gazed at the confessor with the utmost surprise, and strange to tell, though he had known him nearly twenty years, it was the first time he had seen his head completely uncovered. Father Morris’s cowl had now fallen off entirely, and displayed the head of a man between forty and fifty, whose fine features bore the traces of what he had endured. His noble expressive brow seemed wrinkled more by care than age, and his sable locks had evidently become “grizzled here and there,” prematurely. Sir Ambrose gazed upon him intently, for the peculiar expression of his features seemed to recall some half-forgotten circumstance to his mind, dimly obscured, however, by the mist of time. The earnestness with which he regarded the monk, seemed at length to remind the latter of his imprudence. He started, and, whilst a deep crimson flushed his usually sallow countenance, he hastily resumed his cowl, and appeared again to the eyes of the spectators, the same cold, unimpassioned, abstracted being as before.
The ovation had now nearly reached Blackfriars’ bridge, at the entrance to which, a triumphal arch had been erected. The moment the Queen and her heroic general passed under it, a small figure of Fame was contrived to descend from the entablature, and, hovering over the hero, to drop a laurel crown upon his head. Shouts of applause followed this well-executed device; and the passengers in the balloons, wondering at the noise, all pressed forward at the same moment to ascertain the cause of such continued acclamations. The throng of balloons became thus every instant more dense, whilst some young city apprentices having hired each a pair of wings for the day, and not exactly knowing how to manage them, a dreadful tumult ensued; and the balloons became entangled with the winged heroes and each other in inextricable confusion.
The noise now became tremendous; the conductors of the balloons swearing at each other the most refined oaths, and the ladies screaming in concert. Several balloons were rent in the scuffle and fell with tremendous
