You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting

With most admired disorder.

--MACBETH.

It was afterwards remembered that during the banquets and revels which

occupied the remainder of this eventful day the bearing of Leicester and

of Varney were totally different from their usual demeanour. Sir Richard

Varney had been held rather a man of counsel and of action than a votary

of pleasure. Business, whether civil or military, seemed always to be

his proper sphere; and while in festivals and revels, although he well

understood how to trick them up and present them, his own part was that

of a mere spectator; or if he exercised his wit, it was in a rough,

caustic, and severe manner, rather as if he scoffed at the exhibition

and the guests than shared the common pleasure.

But upon the present day his character seemed changed. He mixed among

the younger courtiers and ladies, and appeared for the moment to be

actuated by a spirit of light-hearted gaiety, which rendered him a match

for the liveliest. Those who had looked upon him as a man given up

to graver and more ambitious pursuits, a bitter sneerer and passer of

sarcasms at the expense of those who, taking life as they find it,

were disposed to snatch at each pastime it presents, now perceived with

astonishment that his wit could carry as smooth an edge as their own,

his laugh be as lively, and his brow as unclouded. By what art of

damnable hypocrisy he could draw this veil of gaiety over the black

thoughts of one of the worst of human bosoms must remain unintelligible

to all but his compeers, if any such ever existed; but he was a man of

extraordinary powers, and those powers were unhappily dedicated in all

their energy to the very worst of purposes.

It was entirely different with Leicester. However habituated his

mind usually was to play the part of a good courtier, and appear gay,

assiduous, and free from all care but that of enhancing the pleasure

of the moment, while his bosom internally throbbed with the pangs of

unsatisfied ambition, jealousy, or resentment, his heart had now a

yet more dreadful guest, whose workings could not be overshadowed or

suppressed; and you might read in his vacant eye and troubled brow that

his thoughts were far absent from the scenes in which he was compelling

himself to play a part. He looked, moved, and spoke as if by a

succession of continued efforts; and it seemed as if his will had in

some degree lost the promptitude of command over the acute mind and

goodly form of which it was the regent. His actions and gestures,

instead of appearing the consequence of simple volition, seemed, like

those of an automaton, to wait the revolution of some internal machinery

ere they could be performed; and his words fell from him piecemeal,

interrupted, as if he had first to think what he was to say, then how

it was to be said, and as if, after all, it was only by an effort of

continued attention that he completed a sentence without forgetting both

the one and the other.




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