[The Last Of The Barons Complete by Edward Bulwer-Lytton]@TWC D-Link bookThe Last Of The Barons Complete CHAPTER I 20/20
But thou art a gallant knight, De Fulke, though a poor courtier." "The saints keep me so!" returned De Fulke.
"From overgluttony, from over wine-bibbing, from cringing to a king's leman, from quaking at a king's frown, from unbonneting to a greasy mob, from marrying an old crone for vile gold, may the saints ever keep Raoul de Fulke and his sons! Amen!" This speech, in which every sentence struck its stinging satire into one or other of the listeners, was succeeded by an awkward silence, which Montagu was the first to break. "Pardieu!" he said, "when did Lord Hastings leave us, and what fair face can have lured the truant ?" "He left us suddenly on the archery-ground," answered the young Lovell. "But as well might we track the breeze to the rose as Lord William's sigh to maid or matron." While thus conversed the cavaliers, and their plumes waved, and their mantles glittered along the broken ground, Marmaduke Nevile's eye pursued the horsemen with all that bitter feeling of wounded pride and impotent resentment with which Youth regards the first insult it receives from Power..
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