And all manner of creeping things too?
WALTER MAP.
--Well, there were Abbots--but they did not bring their women; and so
we were dull enough at first, but in the end we flourished out into a
merriment; for the old King would act servitor and hand a dish to his
son; whereupon my Lord of York--his fine-cut face bowing and beaming
with all that courtesy which hath less loyalty in it than the backward
scrape of the clown's heel--'great honour,' says he, 'from the King's
self to the King's son.' Did you hear the young King's quip?
HERBERT.
No, what was it?
WALTER MAP.
Glancing at the days when his father was only Earl of Anjou, he
answered:--'Should not an earl's son wait on a king's son?' And when
the cold corners of the King's mouth began to thaw, there was a great
motion of laughter among us, part real, part childlike, to be freed
from the dulness--part royal, for King and kingling both laughed, and
so we could not but laugh, as by a royal necessity--part childlike
again--when we felt we had laughed too long and could not stay
ourselves--many midriff-shaken even to tears, as springs gush out
after earthquakes--but from those, as I said before, there may come a
conflagration--tho', to keep the figure moist and make it hold water,
I should say rather, the lacrymation of a lamentation; but look if
Thomas have not flung himself at the King's feet.
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