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The Baron, I should judge from the tone of M. Amyot's letter, was much disappointed, yet, as a faithful and obedient subject of one whose nay is nay, he will be cautious in so expressing himself as to be self-committed. "Thus, my dear sir, prospects abroad look dark. I turn with some faint hope to my own country again.
When the Italian discovered the place of Amyot's retreat, and the bishop heard that the courtier was sent by the queen, he was seized with terror and refused to leave the abbey.
After all, he was younger and less sure of himself than I had fancied. "See here, mother," he went on, "there's something here that's got to be cleared up, and as you say this gentleman is an old friend of yours it had better be cleared up in his presence. Maybe he can help explain it and if he can't, it's got to be explained to him." Mrs. Amyot's lips moved, but she made no sound.
I was sure now that she did it only for Lancelot, and judging from the size of her audience and the price of the tickets I concluded that Lancelot must be receiving a liberal education. I was living in New York that winter, and in the rotation of dinners I found myself one evening at Mrs. Amyot's side.
We know how Shakespeare on the like occasion was wont to transmute into golden verse the silver speech supplied to him by North's version of Amyot's Plutarch. With the text of Lord Berners before him, the author of King Edward III. has given us for the gold of Froissart not even adulterated copper, but unadulterated lead.
This struck me as in such bad taste that I made no answer; and it was he who spoke next. "Did I understand you to say that you were an old friend of Mrs. Amyot's?" "I think I may claim to be, if it is the same Mrs. Amyot I had the pleasure of knowing many years ago. My Mrs. Amyot used to lecture too " "To pay for her son's education?" "I believe so." "Well see you later."
I was sure that she had reached the point of measuring and enjoying her effects, of deliberately manipulating her public; and there must indeed have been a certain exhilaration in attaining results so considerable by means involving so little conscious effort. Mrs. Amyot's art was simply an extension of coquetry: she flirted with her audience.
I have since had reason to think that he would have preferred to be called Billy, and to hunt cats with the other boys in the block: his curls and his poetry were simply another outlet for Mrs. Amyot's irrepressible coquetry. But if Lancelot was not genuine, his mother's love for him was. It justified everything the lectures were for the baby, after all.
At this period, the idea appears to have been to execute the work in London. Shortly after appearing before the Committee Borrow returned to Norwich, this time by coach, with several books in the Manchu-Tartar dialect, including the Gospel of St Matthew and Amyot's Manchu-French Dictionary. His instructions were to learn the language and come up for examination in six months' time.
"I think you told me this afternoon that you were an old friend of Mrs. Amyot's?" he began awkwardly. I assented. "Will you come in and see her?" "Now? I shall be very glad to, if " "She's ready; she's expecting you," he interposed. He offered no further explanation, and I followed him in silence. He led me down the long corridor, and pushed open the door of a sitting-room.
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