e trembling with
emotion, he read his love-song to the fair Geraldine. A murmur of
applause arose when he had read his first sonnet. The king only looked
gloomily, with fixed eyes; the queen alone remained uninterested and
cold.

"She is a complete actress," thought Henry Howard, in the madness of his
pain. "Not a muscle of her face stirs; and yet this sonnet must remind
her of the fairest and most sacred moment of our love."

The queen remained unmoved and cold. But had Henry Howard looked at Lady
Jane Douglas, he would have seen how she turned pale and blushed; how
she smiled with rapture, and how, nevertheless, her eyes filled with
tears.

Earl Surrey, however, saw nothing but the queen; and the sight of her
made him tremble with rage and pain. His eyes darted lightning: his
countenance glowed with passion; his whole being was in desperate,
enthusiastic excitement. At that moment he would have gladly breathed
out his life at Geraldine's feet, if she would only recognize him--if
she would only have the courage to call him her beloved.

But her smiling calmness, her friendly coolness, brought him to despair.

He crumpled the paper in his hand; the letters danced before his eyes;
he could read no more.

But he would not remain, mute, either. Like the dying swan, he would
breathe out his pain in a last song, and give sound and words to his
despair and his agony. He could no longer read; but he improvised.

Like a glowing stream of lava, the words flowed from his lips; in fiery
dithyrambic, in impassioned hymns, he poured forth his love and pain.
The genius of poesy hovered over him and lighted up his noble and
thoughtful brow.

He was radiantly beautiful in his enthusiasm; and even the queen felt
herself carried away by his words. His plaints of love, his longing
pains, his rapture and his sad fancies, found an echo in her heart. She
understood him; for she felt the same joy, the same sorrow and the same
rapture; only she did not feel all this for him.

But, as we have said, he enchanted her; the current of his passion
carried her away. She wept at his laments; she smiled at his hymns of
joy.

When Henry Howard at length ceased, profound silence reigned in the vast
and brilliant hall.

All faces betrayed deep emotion; and this universal silence was the
poet's fairest triumph; for it showed that envy and jealousy were dumb,
and that scorn itself could find no words.

A momentary pause ensued; it resembled