men found him when they looked at him from the dock.  It was in Mr. Chiffinch’s closet that I was made known to him.  I had spoken too with my Lord Halifax—­another brilliant fellow, very satirical and witty, for which the King loved him, though all the world guessed, and the King, I think knew, that his opposition to our cause was so hot as even to keep him in correspondence with the Duke of Monmouth, safe away in Holland.  At least that was the talk in the coffee-houses.  He, like the Lord Keeper North, hated a Papist like the Devil, and all his ways and wishes.  He said of my Lord Rochester, now made president of the Council—­a post of immense dignity and no power at all—­that “he was kicked upstairs,” which was a very precise description of the matter.

* * * * *

I was taken straight through into the Duke’s private closet, where he awaited me; and, by the rarest chance His Majesty was just about to take his leave, and they had me in before he was gone.

I was very deeply shocked by His Majesty’s appearance.  He was standing below a pair of candles when I came in, and his face was all in shadow; but when, after I had saluted the two, he moved out presently, I could see how fallen his face was, and how heavily lined.  Since it was evening too, and he had not shaved since morning I could see a little frostiness, as it were, upon his chin.  He dyed his eyebrows and moustaches, I suppose, for these were as black as ever.  His melancholy eyes had a twinkle in them, as he looked at me.

“Well,” said he, “so here is our hero back again—­come to pay his respects to the rising sun, I suppose.” (But he said it very pleasantly, without any irony.)

“Why, Sir,” said I, “I have always understood that there is neither rising nor setting with England’s sun; but that it is always in mid-heaven.  The King never dies; and the King can do no wrong.”

(Such was the manner in which we spoke at Court in those days—­very foolish and bombastic, no doubt.)

“Hark to that, brother,” said the King; “there is a pretty compliment to us both!  It is to neither of us that Mr. Mallock is loyal; but to the Crown only.”

“It is that which we all serve, Sir,” said I; “even Your Majesty.”

The King smiled.

“Well,” he said, “I must be off while you two plot, I suppose.  Come and see me too, Mr. Mallock; when you have done all your duties.”

I took him to the door of the closet where the servants were waiting for him; and even his gait seemed to me older.

Now James had very little—­(though no Stuart could have none)—­of his family’s charm.  He looked no older, no sharper and no lighter than a year ago; and he had learned nothing from adversity, as I presently understood.  He very graciously made me sit down; but in even that the condescension was evident—­not as his brother did it.

“You have been to Rome, again,” he said pretty soon, when he had told me how he did, and how the King was not so well as he had been.  “And what news do you bring with you?”