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This was the legal position of all slaves; but it naturally often happened that those who were men of knowledge or skill, as secretaries, for example, librarians, doctors, or even as body-servants, were in intimate and happy relations with their owners , and in the household of a humane man no well-conducted slave need fear bodily degradation.
Drusus's travelling cortège would have seemed small enough compared with the hedge of outriders, footmen, and body-servants that surrounded the great man. But notwithstanding his prospective dignities, and his present importance, Lentulus Crus was hardly an imposing personality. He was a bald-pated, florid individual, with rough features, a low, flat forehead, and coarse lips.
A few blamed him, but they soon followed as the year rolled away. More were missing every time a Union camp lay near, and great tales were told of the chances for young negroes who would go as body-servants to the Yankee officers. Gideon heard all and was silent.
He was supported by two stalwart body-servants, whilst a third held a shield over his head to protect him from the sun, and a fourth carried a large stool, upon which he was to sit. Behind each party, also, I perceived a number of Zulus in their war-dress, all of them armed with broad stabbing spears.
Besides those who were properly members of the family, there was a small army of servants, ranging from the purest white to the blackest black; all slaves, of course. There were cooks, laundresses, waiters, valets, lackeys, coachmen, body-servants, and lady's-maids; every kind of servitor which ingenuity could devise or luxury demand.
As a love-token the Princess gave him the diamond; and, at parting, Rustem promised to go to see her secretly in Cashmere. The young Mirza had two favourite attendants who served him as secretaries, stewards and body-servants. One was named Topaz; he was handsome and well-made, as fair as a Circassian beauty, as gentle and obliging as an Armenian, and as wise as a Parsee.
Now had I planned my educational institute altogether differently, had I offered to train a special class, body-servants, footmen or housemaids, shoemakers or tailors, tradesmen or merchants, soldiers or even noblemen, then should I have gained fame and glory for the great usefulness and practical nature of my institution, for certain; and surely all men would have hastened to acknowledge it as an important matter, and as a thing to be adequately supported by the State.
House-servants and body-servants were more intelligent than those who lived only in the field. They were very imaginative, and talked with God. One woman in giving a sketch of slave life, said a young girl went to a night meeting contrary to orders, and for so doing was stripped naked and whipped in the presence of the other slaves, the master himself plying the lash.
These foolish counselors, or, as Guicciardini calls them, 'men of low estate, body-servants for the most part of the king, were headed by Stephen de Vesc, who had been raised from the post of the king's valet de chambre to be the Seneschal de Beaucaire, and by William Briçonnet, formerly a merchant, now Bishop of S. Malo.
About him, and little and indistinct in this glow, a number of body-servants sustained and supported him, and overshadowed and standing in a huge semicircle beneath him were his intellectual subordinates, his remembrancers and computators and searchers and servants, and all the distinguished insects of the court of the moon.
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