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But Joan stoutly held her peace. "Or if ye will, the little maid will dance the coranto for you, straight from my Lord Chancellor's dancing-master; and while she dances I will sing." "Why, hark 'e, Rob," spoke out one motherly dame, "they two do look clean-like. Children, too who'd gi' them stones when they beg for bread?
It consists of a step forward, a pause during which the dancer balances on one foot, holding the other suspended forward for a moment, then another step, followed by a bow on the gentleman's part and a deep courtesy by the lady. I confess that I was uneasy, for Frances was a country girl, and the coranto was the most trying, though, if well done, the most beautiful of all dances.
After that, the king led a lady a single coranto; and then the rest of the lords, one after another, other ladies: very noble it was, and great pleasure to see. Then to country dances: the king leading the first. Of the ladies that danced, the Duke of Monmouth's lady, and my Lady Castlemaine, and a daughter of Sir Harry de Vicke's were the best.
M'sieu spoke dreadful English, but danced like the essence of agility, and taught both Nick and Cicely the latest Italian coranto, playing the tune upon his queer little pochette. Cicely already danced like a pixy, and laughed merrily at her comrade's first awkward antics, until he flushed with embarrassment.
It is all as dull as ditch-water now Monsieur de Malfort is gone. He was always pleasant, and he let me play on his guitar, though he swore it excruciated him. And he taught me the new Versailles coranto. There's no pleasure for any one since he fell ill and left England." "You shall come to the Manor. It will be a change, even though you hate the country and love London."
It was difficult to sound a warning-note in ears so obstinately deaf to all serious things. Papillon came bounding in after her dancing-lesson exuberant, loquacious. "The little beast has taught me a new step in the coranto.
There is no such thing as shame nowadays, except that it is shameful to have done nothing to be ashamed of. I have wasted my life, Angela. There was not a woman at the Louvre who had my complexion, nor one who could walk a coranto with more grace. Yet I have consented to be a nobody at two Courts.
It seems the sort of thing a poet so habited might be expected to say between a galliard and a coranto. At first sight we seem to have reached a really good rhetorical play when we arrive at Bancroft's tragedy of Sertorius, published in 1679, and so it would be if Dryden and Lee had never written.
Then all the instruments broke out together in quick triple time; the stringed instruments supplying a hasty throbbing accompaniment, while the shrill flutes began to whistle and the drums to gallop; there was yet a pause in the dance, till the Queen made the first movement; and then the whole whirled off on the wings of a coranto.
She would play with her rings that her courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto that an ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her character in fact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade.
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