, and I
declare to you I had no more trouble with him till next he was left
idle. I gave him tutors, and he studied with fervour, and made
progress at which they were amazed. He learnt the High Dutch faster
than any other of my people, and could soon jabber away in it with
the best of the Elector's folk, and I began to think I had a nephew
who would do me no small credit. I sent him to perfect his studies
at Leyden, but shall I confess it to you? it was to find that no
master nor discipline could keep him out of the riotings and
quarrels of the worse sort of students. Nay, I found him laid by
with a rapier thrust in the side from a duel, for no better cause
than biting his thumb at a Scots law student in chapel, his apology
being that to sit through a Dutch sermon drove him crazy. 'Tis not
that he is not trustworthy. Find employment for the restless demon
that is in him, and all is well with him; moreover, he is full of
wit and humour, and beguiles a long journey or tedious evening at an
inn better than any comrade I ever knew, extracting mirth from all
around, even the very discomforts, and searching to the quick all
that is to be seen. But if left to himself, the restless demon that
preys on him is sure to set him to something incalculable. At Turin
it set him to scraping acquaintance with a Capuchin friar, a dirty
rogue whom I would have kept on the opposite side of the street.
That was his graver mood; but what more must he do, but borrow or
steal, I know not how, the ghastly robes of the Confraternity of
Death--the white garb and peaked cap with two holes for the eyes,
wherewith men of all degrees disguise themselves while doing the
pious work of bearing the dead to the grave. None suspected him,
for the disguise is complete, and a duke may walk unknown beside a
water-carrier, bearing the corpse of a cobbler. All would have been
well, but that at the very brink of the grave the boy's fiend--'tis
his own word--impelled him to break forth into his wild "Ho! ho!
ho!" with an eldritch shriek, and slipping out of his cerements,
dash off headlong over the wall of the cemetery. He was not
followed. I believe the poor body belonged to a fellow whose
salvation was more than doubtful in spite of all the priests could
do, and that the bearers really took him for the foul fiend. It was
not till a week or two after that the ring of his voice and laugh
caused him to be recognised by one of the Duke of Savoy's gentle