Still no one ascended the golden and crimson throne, though many of the
ladies and gentlemen fluttering about it were arrayed as royally as any
common king or queen need wish to be. They promenaded up and down, arm
in arm; they seated themselves in the carved and gilded chairs; they
gathered in little groups to talk and laugh, did everything, in short,
but ascend the throne; and the solitary spectator up above began to grow
intensely curious to know who it was for. Their conversation he could
plainly hear, and to say that it amazed him, would be to use a feeble
expression, altogether inadequate to his feelings. Not that it was the
remarks they made that gave his system each a shook, but the names by
which they addressed each other. One answered to the aspiring cognomen
of the Duke of Northumberland; another was the Earl of Leicester;
another, the Duke of Devonshire; another, the Earl of Clarendon;
another, the Duke of Buckingham; and so on, ad infinitum, dukes and
earls alternately, like bricks and mortar in the wall of a house.
There were other dignitaries besides, some that Sir Norman had a faint
recollection of hearing were dead for some years--Cardinal Wolsey,
Sir Thomas More, the Earl of Bothwell, King Henry Darnley, Sir Walter
Raleigh, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Southampton, the Duke of York,
and no end of others with equally sonorous titles. As for mere lords and
baronets, and such small deer, there was nothing so plebeian present,
and they were evidently looked upon by the distinguished assembly, like
small beer in thunder, with pity and contempt. The ladies, too, were all
duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, and looked fit for princesses,
Sir Norman thought, though he heard none of them styled quite so high as
that. The tone of conversation was light and easy, but at the same
time extremely ceremonious and courtly, and all seemed to be enjoying
themselves in the moat delightful sort of a way, which people of,
such distinguished rank, I am told, seldom do. All went merry as a
marriage-bell, and sweetly over the gay jingle of voices rose the sweet,
faint strains of the unseen music.
Suddenly all was changed. The great door of glass and gilding opposite
the throne was flung wide, and a grand usher in a grand court livery
flourished a mighty grand wand, and shouted, in a stentorian voice, "Back: back, ye lieges, and make way for Her Majesty, Queen Miranda!"
Instantly the unseen band thundered forth the national anthem. The
splendid throng fell back on either hand in profoundest silence and
expectation. The grand usher mysteriously disappeared, and in his place
there stalked forward a score of soldiers, with clanking swords and
fierce moustaches, in the gorgeous uniform of the king's body-guard.
These showy warriors arranged themselves silently on either side of the
crimson throne, and were followed by half a dozen dazzling personages,
the foremost crowned with mitre, armed with crozier, and robed in the
ecclesiastical glory of an archbishop, but the face underneath, to the
deep surprise and scandal of Sir Norman, was that of the fastest young
roue of Charles court, after him came another pompous dignitary, in such
unheard of magnificence that the unseen looker-on set him down for
a prime minister, or a lord high chancellor, at the very least. The
somewhat gaudy-looking gentlemen who stepped after the pious prelate and
peer wore the stars and garters of foreign courts, and were evidently
embassadors extraordinary to that of her midnight majesty. After them
came a snowy flock of fair young girls, angels all but the wings,
slender as sylphs, and robed in purest white. Each bore on her arm a
basket of flowers, roses and rosebuds of every tint, from snowy white to
darkest crimson, and as they floated in they scattered them lightly
as they went. And then after all came another vision, "the last, the
brightest, the best--the Midnight Queen," herself. One other figure
followed her, and as they entered, a shout arose from the whole
assemblage, "Long live Queen Miranda!" And bowing gracefully and easily
to the right end left, the queen with a queenly step, trod the long
crimson carpet and mounted the regal throne.