As the noise began to abate,a broad glare of light was seen to appear from the gate of the Park,and broadening and brightening as it came nearer,advanced along the open and fair avenue that led towards the Gallery-tower;and which,as we have already noticed,was lined on either hand by the retainers of the Earl of Leicester.The word was passed along the line,The Queen!The Queen!Silence,and stand fast!Onward came the cavalcade,illuminated by two hundred thick waxen torches,in the hands of as many horsemen,which cast a light like that of broad day all around the procession,but especially on the principal group,of which the Queen herself,arrayed in the most splendid manner,and blazing with jewels,formed the central figure.She was mounted on a milk-white horse,which she reined with peculiar grace and dignity;and in the whole of her stately and noble carriage you saw the daughter of an hundred kings.
The ladies of the court,who rode beside her Majesty,had taken especial care that their own external appearance should not be more glorious than their rank and the occasion altogether demanded,so that no inferior luminary might appear to approach the orbit of royalty.But their personal charms,and the magnificence by which,under every prudential restraint,they were necessarily distinguished,exhibited them as the very flower of a realm so far famed for splendour and beauty.The magnificence of the courtiers,free from such restraints as prudence imposed on the ladies,was yet more unbounded.
Leicester,who glittered like a golden image with jewels and cloth of gold,rode on her Majesty's right hand,as well in quality of her host as of her master of the horse.The black steed which he mounted had not a single white hair on his body,and was one of the most renowned chargers in Europe,having been purchased by the Earl at large expense for this royal occasion.
As the noble animal chafed at the slow pace of the procession,and,arching his stately neck,champed on the silver bits which restrained him,the foam flew from his mouth,and speckled his well-formed limbs as if with spots of snow.The rider well became the high place which he held,and the proud steed which he bestrode;for no man in England,or perhaps in Europe,was more perfect than Dudley in horsemanship,and all other exercises belonging to his quality.He was bareheaded as were all the courtiers in the train;and the red torchlight shone upon his long,curled tresses of dark hair,and on his noble features,to the beauty of which even the severest criticism could only object the lordly fault,as it may be termed,of a forehead somewhat too high.On that proud evening those features wore all the grateful solicitude of a subject,to show himself sensible of the high honour which the Queen was conferring on him,and all the pride and satisfaction which became so glorious a moment.Yet,though neither eye nor feature betrayed aught but feelings which suited the occasion,some of the Earl's personal attendants remarked that he was unusually pale,and they expressed to each other their fear that he was taking more fatigue than consisted with his health.
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.