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I hae been as far as Muscovia in my sma' trading way, as a travelling merchant, and I hae been through France, and the Low Countries, and a' Poland, and maist feck o' Germany, and O! it would grieve your honour's soul to see the murmuring and the singing and massing that's in the kirk, and the piping that's in the quire, and the heathenish dancing and dicing upon the Sabbath!
But Martin had received a higher call, and although the old Adam within him would have its way, at times, yet his whole heart was set on serving God. To Hubert this dissipation would have seemed a small thing; to Martin such drinking, dicing, and brawling was simply selling his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Robin Turgis was prompt; flagons and pipkins rattled as the men and women gathered round their table and Renéwed their drinking and dicing with fresh zest from the scuffle they had just witnessed. Guy Tabarie laughed one of his long fat laughs as he lingered over memory's picture of the way Huguette had trussed and trounced each of the amazons.
Laws of economy, of polity, of health, of all which makes human life endurable, may be ignored and trampled under foot, and are too often, every day, for the sake of present greed, of present passion; self-interest may become, and will become, more and more blinded, just in proportion as it is not enlightened by virtue; till a nation may arrive, though, thank God, but seldom, at that state of frantic recklessness which Salvian describes among his Roman countrymen in Gaul, when, while the Franks were thundering at their gates, and starved and half-burnt corpses lay about the unguarded streets, the remnant, like that in doomed Jerusalem of old, were drinking, dicing, ravishing, robbing the orphan and the widow, swindling the poor man out of his plot of ground, and sending meanwhile to the tottering Caesar at Rome, to ask, not for armies, but for Circensian games.
This item the regent liked little, as being too irksome for his temper. Was it not of record how Louis, the Grand Monarque, had twice made certain millions for himself by the simple process of changing the value of the coin? Dicing, drinking, amorous Philippe, easy-going, shallow-thinking, truly wert thou better fitted for a throne than for a banker's chair!
"I'm not what I seem, alas!" answered the trooper and indeed, as it turned out, poor Dick told the truth for that very night, at supper in the hall, where the gentlemen of the troop took their repasts, and passed most part of their days dicing and smoking of tobacco, and singing and cursing, over the Castlewood ale Harry Esmond found Dick the Scholar in a woful state of drunkenness.
The May light lasted long in the sky; but as it failed Frederick went out, as was his wont, and for many hours he spent his time with a number of kindred spirits in a neighbouring tavern, quaffing large potations, and dicing and gaming after the fashion of the Court gallants.
The King was dicing with Fernandez, the Portuguese banker; but I ventured to interrupt the game and draw him aside. He might not have taken this well, but that my first word caught his attention. "Sire," I said, "the shutter is open." He understood in a moment. "St. Gris!" He exclaimed with animation. "Where? At the same house?" "No, sire; in the Rue Cloitre Notre Dame." "You have got him, then?"
Some piece of gallantry, no doubt, which ended in a duel. He and his father are at odds. They seldom speak. The Chevalier, having money, drinks and gambles. The Vicomte d'Halluys won a thousand livres from him last night in the private assembly." "Wild blood," said Bouchard, draining his tankard. "France has too much of it. Wine and dicing and women: fine snares the devil sets with these.
"Second, Item, you shall forbid swearing, brawling, and dicing, and such-like disorders as may breed contention and disorders in your ships." "Five, All persons, whatsoever, within your ship shall come to the ordinary services of the ship without contradiction."
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