which suited the occasion,
some of the Earl's personal attendants remarked, that he was unusually pale, and
they expressed to each other their fear that he was taking more fatigue than
consisted with his health.
    Varney followed close behind his master, as the principal esquire in
waiting, and had charge of his lordship's black velvet bonnet, garnished with a
clasp of diamonds, and surmounted by a white plume. He kept his eye constantly
on his master; and, for reasons with which the reader is not unacquainted, was,
among Leicester's numerous dependants, the one who was most anxious that his
lord's strength and resolution should carry him successfully through a day so
agitating. For although Varney was one of the few - the very few moral monsters,
who contrive to lull to sleep the remorse of their own bosoms, and are drugged
into moral insensibility by atheism, as men in extreme agony are lulled by
opium, yet he knew that in the breast of his patron there was already awakened
the fire that is never quenched, and that his lord felt, amid all the pomp and
magnificence we have described, the gnawing of the worm that dieth not. Still,
however, assured as Lord Leicester stood, by Varney's own intelligence, that his
Countess laboured under an indisposition which formed an unanswerable apology to
the Queen for her not appearing at Kenilworth, there was little danger, his wily
retainer thought, that a man so ambitious would betray himself by giving way to
any external weakness.
    The train, male and female, who attended immediately upon the Queen's
person, were of course of the bravest and the fairest, - the highest born
nobles, and the wisest counsellors, of that distinguished reign, to repeat whose
names were but to weary the reader. Behind came a long crowd of knights and
gentlemen, whose rank and birth, however distinguished, were thrown into shade,
as their persons into the rear of a procession, whose front was of such august
majesty.
    Thus marshalled, the cavalcade approached the Gallery Tower, which formed,
as we have often observed, the extreme barrier of the Castle.
    It was now the part of the huge porter to step forward; but the lubbard was
so overwhelmed with confusion of spirit, - the contents of one immense black
jack of double ale which he had just drunk to quicken his memory, having
treacherously confused the brain it was intended to clear, - that he only
groaned piteously, and remained sitting on his stone-seat; and the Queen would
have passed on without greeting, had not the gigantic