as
snow-white. Of course his face was closely shaven; for it is an odd
fact that the higher a man's sacerdotal pretensions rise, the more
unlike a man he usually makes himself--resembling the weaker sex as much
as possible, both in person and costume. This man's sacerdotal
pretensions ran very high, and accordingly his black cassock fell about
his feet like a woman's dress, and his face was guiltless of beard or
whisker.

The age of the King was thirty-eight, and he was one of the tallest men
in his kingdom. The colour of his hair, whiskers, and small forked
beard, was only one remove from black. Dark pencilled eyebrows, of that
surprised shape which many persons admire, arched over keen liquid dark
eyes. The general type of the features was Grecian; their regularity
was perfect, but the nose was a trifle too prominent for pure Grecian.
About the set of the lips, delicately as they were cut, there was a
peculiarity which a physiognomist might have interpreted to mean that
when their owner had once placed a particular end before him, no
considerations of right on the one hand, or of friendship on the other,
would be allowed to interfere with its attainment. This was a very
clever man, a very sagacious, far-seeing man, a very handsome man, a
very popular man; yet a man whom no human heart ever loved, and who
never loved any human being--a man who could stand alone, and who did
stand alone, to the hour when, "with all his imperfections on his head,"
he stood before the bar of God.

"The match is no serviceable one," said the Archbishop.

"Truth to tell," replied the King a little doubtfully, "I scarce do
account my cousin herself an heretic:--yet I wis not--she may be. But
she hath been rocked in the heresy in her cradle, and ever sithence hath
been within earshot thereof. You wot well, holy Father, what her lord
was; and his mother, with whom she hath dwelt these ten years or more,
is worser than himself. Now it shall never serve to have Kent lost to
the Church her cause. You set affiance on him, I know, and I the like:
and if he be not misturned, methinks he may yet prove a good servant.
But here is this alliance cast in our way! I know they be wed without
my licence: yet what should it serve to fine or prison him? To prison
her might be other matter; but we cannot touch her. So this done should
not serve our turn. Father, is there any means that you can devise to
break this marriage?"

"The priest tha