It was drawing to the close of an almost tropical June day, that the
crowd who had thronged the precincts of St. Paul's since early morning,
began to disperse. The sun, that had throbbed the livelong day like a
great heart of fire in a sea of brass, was sinking from sight in clouds
of crimson, purple and gold, yet Paul's Walk was crowded. There were
court-gallants in ruffles and plumes; ballad-singers chanting the not
over-delicate ditties of the Earl of Rochester; usurers exchanging
gold for bonds worth three times what they gave for them; quack-doctors
reading in dolorous tones the bills of mortality of the preceding day,
and selling plague-waters and anti-pestilential abominations, whose
merit they loudly extolled; ladies too, richly dressed, and many of them
masked; and booksellers who always made St. Paul's a favorite haunt, and
even to this day patronize its precincts, and flourish in the regions of
Paternoster Row and Ave Maria Lane; court pages in rich liveries, pert
and flippant; serving-men out of place, and pickpockets with a keen eye
to business; all clashed and jostled together, raising a din to which
the Plain of Shinar, with its confusion of tongues and Babylonish
workmen, were as nothing.
Moving serenely through this discordant sea of his fellow-creatures came
a young man booted and spurred, whose rich doublet of cherry colored
velvet, edged and spangled with gold, and jaunty hat set slightly on
one side of his head, with its long black plume and diamond clasp,
proclaimed him to be somebody. A profusion of snowy shirt-frill rushed
impetuously out of his doublet; a black-velvet cloak, lined with
amber-satin, fell picturesquely from his shoulders; a sword with a
jeweled hilt clanked on the pavement as he walked. One hand was covered
with a gauntlet of canary-colored kid, perfumed to a degree that would
shame any belle of to-day, the other, which rested lightly on his
sword-hilt, flashed with a splendid opal, splendidly set. He was a
handsome fellow too, with fair waving hair (for he had the good taste
to discard the ugly wigs then in vogue), dark, bright, handsome eyes,
a thick blonde moustache, a tall and remarkably graceful figure, and an
expression of countenance wherein easy good-nature and fiery impetuosity
had a hard struggle for mastery. That he was a courtier of rank, was
apparent from his rich attire and rather aristocratic bearing and
a crowd of hangers-on followed him as he went, loudly demanding
spur-money. A group of timbril-girls, singing shrilly the songs of the
day, called boldly to him as he passed; and one of them, more free and
easy than the rest, danced up to him striking her timbrel, and shouting
rather than singing the chorus of the then popular ditty,