selves; and the
priest, though a good man, was not a very happily-chosen champion, for
he was one of the old-fashioned, scantily-instructed country priests,
who were more numerous before the Jesuit revival of learning, and knew
nothing of controversy save that adapted to the doctrines of Calvin; so
that in dealing with an Anglican of the school of Ridley and Hooker,
it was like bow ad arrow against sword. And tin those days of change,
controversial reading was one of the primary studies even of young
laymen, and Lord Walwyn, with a view to his grandson's peculiar
position, had taken care that he should be well instructed, so that he
was not at all unequal to the contest. Moreover, apart from argument,
he clung as a point of honour to the Church as to the wife that he had
accepted in his childhood; and often tried to recall the sketch that
Philip Sidney had once given him of a tale that a friend of his designed
to turn into a poem, like Ariosto's, in _terza rima_, of a Red Cross
knight separated from his Una as the true faith, and tempted by a
treacherous Duessa, who impersonated at once Falsehood and Rome. And he
knew so well that the last relaxation of his almost terrified resistance
would make him so entirely succumb to Diane's beauty and brilliancy,
that he kept himself stiffly frigid and reserved.

Diane never openly alluded to the terms on which he stood, but he often
found gifts from unknown hands placed in his room. The books which he
had found there were changed when he had had time to study them; and
marks were placed in some of the most striking passages. They were of
the class that turned the brain of the Knight of La Mancha, but with a
predominance of the pastoral, such as Diane of George of Montemayor and
his numerous imitators--which Philip thought horrible stuff--enduring
nothing but a few of the combats of Amadis de Gaul or Palmerin of
England, until he found that Madame de Selinville prodigiously admired
the 'silly swains more silly than their sheep,' and was very anxious
that M. le Baron should be touched by their beauties; whereupon honest
Philip made desperate efforts to swallow them in his brother's stead,
but was always found fast asleep in the very middle of arguments between
Damon and Thyrsis upon the _devoirs_ of love, or the mournings of some
disconsolate nymph over her jealousies of a favoured rival.

One day, a beautiful ivory box, exhaling sweet perfume, appeared in the
prison chamber, and