The great court festival, so long expected, was at last to take place today. Knights and lords were preparing for the tournament;poets and scholars for the feast of the poets. For the witty and brave king wished to unite the two in this festival today, in order to give the world a rare and great example of a king who could claim all virtue and wisdom as his own; who could be equally great as a hero and as a divine; equally great as a poet and as a philosopher and a scholar.
The knights were to fight for the honor of their ladies; the poets were to sing their songs, and John Heywood to bring out his merry farces. Ay, even the great scholars were to have a part in this festival; for the king had specially, for this, summoned to London from Cambridge, where he was then professor in the university, his former teacher in the Greek language, the great scholar Croke, to whom belonged the merit of having first made the learned world of Germany, as well as of England, again acquainted with the poets of Greece. [Footnote: Tytler, p. 307.] He wished to recite with Croke some scenes from Sophocles to his wondering court; and though, to be sure, there was no one there who understood the Greek tongue, yet all, without doubt, must be enraptured with the wonderful music of the Greek and the amazing erudition of the king.
Preparations were going on everywhere; arrangements were being made;every one was making his toilet, whether it were the toilet of the mind or of the body.
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, made his also; that is to say, he had retired to his cabinet, and was busy filing away at the sonnets which he expected to recite to-day, and in which he lauded the beauty and the grace of the fair Geraldine.
He had the paper in his hand, and was lying on the velvet ottoman which stood before his writing-table.
Had Lady Jane Douglas seen him now, she would have been filled with painful rapture to observe how, with head leaned back on the cushion, his large blue eyes raised dreamily to heaven, he smiled and whispered gentle words.
He was wholly absorbed in sweet reminiscences; he was thinking of those rapturous, blessed hours which he a few days before had spent with his Geraldine; and as he thought of them he adored her, and repeated to her anew in his mind his oath of eternal love and inviolable truth.
His enthusiastic spirit was completely filled with a sweet melancholy; and he felt perfectly intoxicated by the magical happiness afforded him by his Geraldine.
She was his--his at last! After struggles so long and painful, after such bitter renunciation, and such mournful resignation, happiness had at last arisen for him; the never expected had at last become indeed a reality. Catharine loved him. With a sacred oath she had sworn to him that she would one day become his wife; that she would become his wife before God and man.
But when is the day to come on which he may show her to the world as his consort? When will she be at length relieved from the burden of her royal crown? When at length will fall from her those golden chains that bind her to a tyrannical and bloodthirsty husband--to the cruel and arrogant king? When will Catharine at length cease to be queen, in order to become Lady Surrey?
Strange! As he asked himself this, there ran over him a shudder, and an unaccountable dread fell upon his soul.
It seemed to him as if a voice whispered to him: "Thou wilt never live to see that day! The king, old as he is, will nevertheless live longer than thou! Prepare thyself to die, for death is already at thy door!"And it was not the first time that he had heard that voice. Often before it had spoken to him, and always with the same words, the same warning. Often it seemed to him in his dreams as if he felt a cutting pain about the neck; and he had seen a scaffold, from which his own head was rolling down.
Henry Howard was superstitious; for he was a poet, and to poets it is given to perceive the mysterious connection between the visible and the invisible world; to believe that supernatural powers and invisible forms surround man, and either protect him or else curse him.
There were hours in which he believed in the reality of his dreams--in which he did not doubt of that melancholy and horrible fate which they foretold.
Formerly he had given himself up to it with smiling resignation; but now--since he loved Catharine, since she belonged to him--now he would not die. Now, when life held out to him its most enchanting enjoyments, its intoxicating delights--now he would not leave them--now he dreaded to die. He was therefore cautious and prudent; and, knowing the king's malicious, savage, and jealous character, he had always been extremely careful to avoid everything that might excite him, that might arouse the royal hyena from his slumbers.
But it seemed to him as though the king bore him and his family a special spite; as though he could never forgive them that the consort whom he most loved, and who had the most bitterly wronged him, had sprung from their stock. In the king's every word and every look, Henry Howard felt and was sensible of this secret resentment of the king; he suspected that Henry was only watching for the favorable moment when he could seize and strangle him.
