on our own wit. But I must give
orders for the water.--If you will take the pinnace, there are the
cloth-of-gold cushions in the chapel may serve to cover the benches for
the day. They are never wanted where they lie, so you may make free with
them too."

Madam Chiffinch accordingly mingled with the flotilla which attended the
King on his voyage down the Thames, amongst whom was the Queen,
attended by some of the principal ladies of the Court. The little plump
Cleopatra, dressed to as much advantage as her taste could devise, and
seated upon her embroidered cushions like Venus in her shell, neglected
nothing that effrontery and minauderie could perform to draw upon
herself some portion of the King's observation; but Charles was not in
the vein, and did not even pay her the slightest passing attention of
any kind, until her boatmen having ventured to approach nearer to the
Queen's barge than etiquette permitted, received a peremptory order to
back their oars, and fall out of the royal procession. Madam Chiffinch
cried for spite, and transgressed Solomon's warning, by cursing the King
in her heart; but had no better course than to return to Westminster,
and direct Chaubert's preparations for the evening.

In the meantime the royal barge paused at the Tower; and, accompanied
by a laughing train of ladies and of courtiers, the gay Monarch made the
echoes of the old prison-towers ring with the unwonted sounds of mirth
and revelry. As they ascended from the river-side to the centre of the
building, where the fine old keep of William the Conqueror, called the
White Tower, predominates over the exterior defences, Heaven only knows
how many gallant jests, good or bad, were run on the comparison of his
Majesty's state-prison to that of Cupid, and what killing similes were
drawn between the ladies' eyes and the guns of the fortress, which,
spoken with a fashionable congee, and listened to with a smile from a
fair lady, formed the fine conversations of the day.

This gay swarm of flutterers did not, however, attend close on the
King's person, though they had accompanied him upon his party on the
river. Charles, who often formed manly and sensible resolutions, though
he was too easily diverted from them by indolence or pleasure, had
some desire to make himself personally acquainted with the state of
the military stores, arms, &c. of which the Tower was then, as now, the
magazine; and, although he had brought with him the usual nu