ision. It was my love, not hers, that found its symbol in the
dying flower and the stalk robbed of its glory. She had said well, it
was as she said; I picked up what she flung and went on my way, hugging
my dead.

In this manner then, as I, Simon the old, have shewn, was I, Simon the
young, brought back to my senses. It is all very long ago.

CHAPTER X

JE VIENS, TU VIENS, IL VIENT

It pleased his Grace the Duke of Monmouth so to do all things that men
should heed his doing of them. Even in those days, and notwithstanding
certain transactions hereinbefore related, I was not altogether a fool,
and I had not been long about him before I detected this propensity and,
as I thought, the intention underlying it. To set it down boldly and
plainly, the more the Duke of Monmouth was in the eye of the nation, the
better the nation accustomed itself to regard him as the king's son; the
more it fell into the habit of counting him the king's son, the less
astonished and unwilling would it be if fate should place him on the
king's seat. Where birth is beyond reproach, dignity may be above
display; a defect in the first demands an ample exhibition of the
second. It was a small matter, this journey to Dover, yet, that he might
not go in the train of his father and the Duke of York, but make men
talk of his own going, he chose to start beforehand and alone; lest even
thus he should not win his meed of notice, he set all the inns and all
the hamlets on the road a-gossiping, by accomplishing the journey from
London to Canterbury, in his coach-and-six, between sunrise and sunset
of a single day. To this end it was needful that the coach should be
light; Lord Carford, now his Grace's inseparable companion, alone sat
with him, while the rest of us rode on horseback, and the Post supplied
us with relays where we were in want of them. Thus we went down
gallantly and in very high style, with his Grace much delighted at being
told that never had king or subject made such pace in his travelling
since the memory of man began. Here was reward enough for all the
jolting, the flogging of horses, and the pain of yokels pressed
unwillingly into pushing the coach with their shoulders through miry
places.

As I rode, I had many things to think of. My woe I held at arm's length.
Of what remained, the intimacy between his Grace and my Lord Carford,
who were there in the coach together, occupied my mind most constantly.
For by now I had moved