The buff
jerkin, broad belt, and long sword of one, showed him to be a Low
Country soldier, whose look of scowling importance, and drunken
impudence, were designed to sustain his title to call himself a Roving
Blade. It seemed to Nigel that he had seen this fellow somewhere or
other. A hedge-parson, or buckle-beggar, as that order of priesthood
has been irreverently termed, sat on the Duke's left, and was easily
distinguished by his torn band, flapped hat, and the remnants of a
rusty cassock. Beside the parson sat a most wretched and meagre-
looking old man, with a threadbare hood of coarse kersey upon his
head, and buttoned about his neck, while his pinched features, like
those of old Daniel, were illuminated by
--"an eye,
Through the last look of dotage still cunning and sly."
On his left was placed a broken attorney, who, for some malpractices,
had been struck from the roll of practitioners, and who had nothing
left of his profession, except its roguery. One or two persons of less
figure, amongst whom there was one face, which, like that of the
soldier, seemed not unknown to Nigel, though he could not recollect
where he had seen it, completed the council-board of Jacob Duke
Hildebrod.
The strangers had full time to observe all this; for his grace the
Duke, whether irresistibly carried on by the full tide of harmony, or
whether to impress the strangers with a proper idea of his
consequence, chose to sing his ditty to an end before addressing them,
though, during the whole time, he closely scrutinized them with his
single optic.
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