'
With what reverence and sympathy did our Pepys listen; but he was forced
to hurry off to get Lord Berkeley a bed; and with 'much ado' (as one may
believe) he did get 'him to bed with My Lord Middlesex;' so, after
seeing these two peers of the realm in that dignified predicament--two
in a bed--'to my cabin again,' where the company were still talking of
the king's difficulties, and how his Majesty was fain to eat a piece of
bread and cheese out of a poor body's pocket; and, at a Catholic house,
how he lay a good while 'in the Priest's Hole, for privacy.'
In all these hairbreadth escapes--of which the king spoke with
infinite humour and good feeling--one name was perpetually
introduced:--George--George Villiers, _Villers_, as the royal narrator
called him; for the name was so pronounced formerly. And well he might;
for George Villiers had been his playmate, classfellow, nay, bedfellow
sometimes, in priests' holes; their names, their haunts, their hearts,
were all assimilated; and misfortune had bound them closely to each
other. To George Villiers let us now return; he is waiting for his royal
master on the other side of the Channel--in England. And a strange
character have we to deal with:--
'A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
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