ely rate him for intermeddling; but
John knew and loved him too well to heed; and his tact and
unobtrusiveness made Henry rely on him more and more.

If the illness had only been confessed, those who watched the King
anxiously would have had more hope; but he was hotly angered at any hint
of his needing care; and though he sometimes relieved oppression by
causing himself to be bled by a servant, he never allowed that anything
ailed him; it was always the hot weather, the anxious tidings, the long
pageant that wearied him--things that were wont to be like gnats on a
lion's mane.

Those solemn banquets and festivals--lasting from forenoon till eventide,
with their endless relays of allegorical subtleties, their long-winded
harangues, noisy music, interludes of giants, sylvan men, distressed
damsels, knights-errant on horseback, ships and forests coming in upon
wheels, and fulsome compliments that must be answered--had been always
his aversion, and were now so heavy an oppression that Bedford would have
persuaded the Queen to curtail them. But to the fair Catherine this
appeared an unkind endeavour of her disagreeable brother-in-law, to
prevent her from shining in her native city, and eclipsing the Burgundian
pomp; and she opened her soft brown eyes in dignified displeasure,
answering that she saw nothing amiss with the King; and she likewise
complained to her husband of his brother's jealousy of her welcome from
her own people, bringing on him one of Henry's most bitter sentences.

Henry would only have had her abate somewhat of the splendour that
gratified her, because he did not think it becoming to outshine her
parents; but Catherine scorned the notion. Her old father would know
nothing, or would smile in his foolish way to see her so brave; and for
her mother, she recked not so long as she had a larded capon before her:
nor was it possible to make the young queen understand that this fatuity
and feebleness were the very reasons for deferring to them.

The ordering of the feast fell to Catherine and her train; and its
splendours on successive days had their full development, greatly to the
constraint and weariness, among others, of Esclairmonde, who was always
assigned to Malcolm Stewart, and throughout these long days had to be
constantly repressing him; not that he often durst make her any direct
compliment, for he was usually quelled into anxious wistful silence, and
merely eyed her earnestly, paying her every