Varney followed close behind his master, as the principal esquire in
waiting, and had charge of his lordship's black velvet bonnet, garnished
with a clasp of diamonds and surmounted by a white plume. He kept his
eye constantly on his master, and, for reasons with which the reader is
not unacquainted, was, among Leicester's numerous dependants, the one
who was most anxious that his lord's strength and resolution should
carry him successfully through a day so agitating. For although Varney
was one of the few, the very few moral monsters who contrive to lull
to sleep the remorse of their own bosoms, and are drugged into moral
insensibility by atheism, as men in extreme agony are lulled by opium,
yet he knew that in the breast of his patron there was already awakened
the fire that is never quenched, and that his lord felt, amid all the
pomp and magnificence we have described, the gnawing of the worm that
dieth not. Still, however, assured as Lord Leicester stood, by Varney's
own intelligence, that his Countess laboured under an indisposition
which formed an unanswerable apology to the Queen for her not appearing
at Kenilworth, there was little danger, his wily retainer thought, that
a man so ambitious would betray himself by giving way to any external
weakness.
The train, male and female, who attended immediately upon the Queen's
person, were, of course, of the bravest and the fairest--the highest
born nobles, and the wisest counsellors, of that distinguished reign,
to repeat whose names were but to weary the reader. Behind came a
long crowd of knights and gentlemen, whose rank and birth, however
distinguished, were thrown into shade, as their persons into the rear of
a procession whose front was of such august majesty.
Thus marshalled, the cavalcade approached the Gallery-tower, which
formed, as we have often observed, the extreme barrier of the Castle.
It was now the part of the huge porter to step forward; but the lubbard
was so overwhelmed with confusion of spirit--the contents of one immense
black jack of double ale, which he had just drunk to quicken his memory,
having treacherously confused the brain it was intended to clear--that
he only groaned piteously, and remained sitting on his stone seat; and
the Queen would have passed on without greeting, had not the gigantic
warder's secret ally, Flibbertigibbet, who lay perdue behind him, thrust
a pin into the rear of the short femoral garment which we elsewhere
described.
The porter uttered a sort of yell, which came not amiss into his part,
started up with his club, and dealt a sound douse or two on each side
of him; and then, like a coach-horse pricked by the spur, started off
at once into the full career of his address, and by dint of active
prompting on the part of Dickie Sludge, delivered, in sounds of gigantic
intonation, a speech which may be thus abridged--the reader being to
suppose that the first lines were addressed to the throng who approached
the gateway; the conclusion, at the approach of the Queen, upon sight of
whom, as struck by some heavenly vision, the gigantic warder dropped his
club, resigned his keys, and gave open way to the Goddess of the night,
and all her magnificent train.