only, dreaming that he too should be a king; and was not
ashamed to tell her majesty that he had rather be sovereign of
a molehill than the highest subject of an emperor."

"They say," said Mr. Leigh, "that he told her plainly he
should be a prince before he died, and that she gave him one
of her pretty quips in return."

"I don't know that her majesty had the best of it. A fool
is many times too strong for a wise man, by virtue of his thick
hide. For when she said that she hoped she should hear from
him in his new principality, 'Yes, sooth,' says he, graciously
enough. 'And in what style?'. asks she. 'To our dear sister,'
says Stukely: to which her clemency had nothing to reply, but
turned away, as Mr. Burleigh told me, laughing."

"Alas for him!" said gentle Mrs. Leigh. "Such self-con-
ceit--and Heaven knows we have the root of it in ourselves
also--is the very daughter of self-will, and of that loud crying
out about I, and me, and mine, which is the very bird-call for
all devils, and the broad road which leads to death."

"It will lead him to his," said Sir Richard; "God grant it
be not upon Tower-hill! for since that Florida plot, and after
that his hopes of Irish preferment came to nought, he who
could not help himself by fair means has taken to foul ones,
and gone over to Italy to the Pope, whose infallibility has not
been proof against Stukely's wit; for he was soon his Holiness's
closet counsellor, and, they say, his bosom friend; and made
him give credit to his boasts that, with three thousand soldiers
he would beat the English out of Ireland, and make the Pope's
son king of it."

"Ay, but," said Mr. Leigh, "I suppose the Italians have
the same fetch now as they had when I was there, to explain
such ugly cases; namely, that the Pope is infallible only in
doctrine, and quoad Pope; while quoad hominem, he is even as
others, or indeed, in general, a deal worse, so that the office,
and not the man, may be glorified thereby. But where is
Stukely now?"

"At Rome when last I heard of him, ruffling it up and down
the Vatican as Baron Ross, Viscount Murrough, Earl Wexford,
Marquis Leinster, and a title or two more, which have cost the
Pope little, seeing that they never were his to give; and plot-
ting, they say, some hare-brained expedition against Ireland by
the help of the Spanish king, which must end in nothing but
his shame and ruin. And now, my sweet hosts, I must call for
serving-boy and lantern, and home to my bed in Bideford."

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