"
"Ay, ay," said the king, laughing good-naturedly, as he raised his
faithful servant from the ground, "that is what ye all say when I do
any thing to please ye. There--there, take the sign-manual, and away
with you and this young fellow. I wonder Steenie and Babie Charles
have not broken in on us before now."
Lord Huntinglen hastened from the cabinet, foreseeing a scene at which
he was unwilling to be present, but which sometimes occurred when
James roused himself so far as to exert his own free will, of which he
boasted so much, in spite of that of his imperious favourite Steenie,
as he called the Duke of Buckingham, from a supposed resemblance
betwixt his very handsome countenance, and that with which the Italian
artists represented the protomartyr Stephen. In fact, the haughty
favourite, who had the unusual good fortune to stand as high in the
opinion of the heir-apparent as of the existing monarch, had
considerably diminished in his respect towards the latter; and it was
apparent, to the more shrewd courtiers, that James endured his
domination rather from habit, timidity, and a dread of encountering
his stormy passions, than from any heartfelt continuation of regard
towards him, whose greatness had been the work of his own hands. To
save himself the pain of seeing what was likely to take place on the
duke's return, and to preserve the king from the additional
humiliation which the presence of such a witness must have occasioned,
the earl left the cabinet as speedily as possible, having first
carefully pocketed the important sign-manual.
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