Immediately there was a pause of dead silence, succeeded by a deep hum
of expectation, the united voice of many thousands, none of whom spoke
above their breath--or, to use a singular expression, the whisper of an
immense multitude.
"They come now, for certain," said Raleigh. "Tressilian, that sound is
grand. We hear it from this distance as mariners, after a long voyage,
hear, upon their night-watch, the tide rush upon some distant and
unknown shore."
"Mass!" answered Blount, "I hear it rather as I used to hear mine own
kine lowing from the close of Wittenswestlowe."
"He will assuredly graze presently," said Raleigh to Tressilian; "his
thought is all of fat oxen and fertile meadows. He grows little better
than one of his own beeves, and only becomes grand when he is provoked
to pushing and goring."
"We shall have him at that presently," said Tressilian, "if you spare
not your wit."
"Tush, I care not," answered Raleigh; "but thou too, Tressilian, hast
turned a kind of owl, that flies only by night--hast exchanged thy songs
for screechings, and good company for an ivy-tod."
"But what manner of animal art thou thyself, Raleigh," said Tressilian,
"that thou holdest us all so lightly?"
"Who--I?" replied Raleigh. "An eagle am I, that never will think of dull
earth while there is a heaven to soar in, and a sun to gaze upon."
"Well bragged, by Saint Barnaby!" said Blount; "but, good Master Eagle,
beware the cage, and beware the fowler. Many birds have flown as high
that I have seen stuffed with straw and hung up to scare kites.--But
hark, what a dead silence hath fallen on them at once!"
"The procession pauses," said Raleigh, "at the gate of the Chase, where
a sibyl, one of the FATIDICAE, meets the Queen, to tell her fortune. I
saw the verses; there is little savour in them, and her Grace has been
already crammed full with such poetical compliments. She whispered to
me, during the Recorder's speech yonder, at Ford-mill, as she entered
the liberties of Warwick, how she was 'PERTAESA BARBARAE LOQUELAE.'"
"The Queen whispered to HIM!" said Blount, in a kind of soliloquy; "Good
God, to what will this world come!"
His further meditations were interrupted by a shout of applause from the
multitude, so tremendously vociferous that the country echoed for miles
round. The guards, thickly stationed upon the road by which the Queen
was to advance, caught up the acclamation, which ran like wildfire to
the Castle, and announced to all within that Queen Elizabeth had entered
the Royal Chase of Kenilworth. The whole music of the Castle sounded
at once, and a round of artillery, with a salvo of small arms, was
discharged from the battlements; but the noise of drums and trumpets,
and even of the cannon themselves, was but faintly heard amidst the
roaring and reiterated welcomes of the multitude.