court inferred.

[1] The reference is evidently to the secret treaty by which King
Charles of England received annual payment for compliance with King
Louis's schemes for French aggression.

CHAPTER XXIV

UNDER THE AEGIS OF THE COURT

The roar of London was about us.

Sign-boards creaked and swung to every puff of wind. Great
hackney-coaches, sunk at the waist like those old gallipot boats of ours,
went ploughing past through the mud of mid-road, with bepowdered footmen
clinging behind and saucy coachmen perched in front. These flunkeys
thought it fine sport to splash us passers-by, or beguiled the time when
there was stoppage across the narrow street by lashing rival drivers with
their long whips and knocking cock-hats to the gutter. 'Prentices stood
ringing their bells and shouting their wares at every shop-door. "What
d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? What d'ye please to lack, good sirs? Walk
this way for kerseys, sayes, and perpetuanoes! Bands and ruffs and
piccadillies! Walk this way! Walk this way!"

"Pardieu, lad!" says M. Radisson, elbowing a saucy spark from the wall
for the tenth time in as many paces. "Pardieu, you can't hear yourself
think! Shut up to you!" he called to a bawling 'prentice dressed in
white velvet waistcoat like a showman's dummy to exhibit the fashion.
"Shut up to you!"

And I heard the fellow telling his comrades my strange companion with the
tangled hair was a pirate from the Barbary States. Another saucy vender
caught at the chance.

"Perukes! Perukes! Newest French periwigs!" he shouts, jangling his
bell and putting himself across M. Radisson's course. "You'd please to
lack a periwig, sir! Walk this way! Walk this way--"

"Out of my way!" orders Radisson with a hiss of his rapier round the
fellow's fat calves. "'Tis a milliner's doll the town makes of a man!
Out of my way!"

And the 'prentice went skipping. We were to meet the directors of the
Hudson's Bay Company that night, and we had come out to refurbish our
scant, wild attire. But bare had we turned the corner for the
linen-draper's shops of Fleet Street when M. Radisson's troubles began.
Idlers eyed us with strange looks. Hucksters read our necessitous state
and ran at heel shouting their wares. Shopmen saw needy customers in us
and sent their 'prentices running. Chairmen splashed us as they passed;
and impudent dandies powdered and patched and laced and bewigged like any
fizgig of a girl would