“It is a pity that so many virtues should have been borne and served by so poor an intellect.”

“Dieu veuille avoir son ane!” whispered Barkilphedro, in a low voice, and in French.

The queen smiled.  Barkilphedro noted the smile.  His conclusion was that biting pleased.  Free licence had been given to his spite.  From that day he thrust his curiosity everywhere, and his malignity with it.  He was given his way, so much was he feared.  He who can make the king laugh makes the others tremble.  He was a powerful buffoon.  Every day he worked his way forward—­underground.  Barkilphedro became a necessity.  Many great people honoured him with their confidence, to the extent of charging him, when they required him, with their disgraceful commissions.

There are wheels within wheels at court.  Barkilphedro became the motive power.  Have you remarked, in certain mechanisms, the smallness of the motive wheel?

Josiana, in particular, who, as we have explained, made use of Barkilphedro’s talents as a spy, reposed such confidence in him that she had not hesitated to entrust him with one of the master-keys of her apartments, by means of which he was able to enter them at any hour.  This excessive licence of insight into private life was in fashion in the seventeenth century.  It was called “giving the key.”  Josiana had given two of these confidential keys—­Lord David had one, Barkilphedro the other.  However, to enter straight into a bedchamber was, in the old code of manners, a thing not in the least out of the way.  Thence resulted incidents.  La Ferte, suddenly drawing back the bed curtains of Mademoiselle Lafont, found inside Sainson, the black musketeer, etc., etc.

Barkilphedro excelled in making the cunning discoveries which place the great in the power of the little.  His walk in the dark was winding, soft, clever.  Like every perfect spy, he was composed of the inclemency of the executioner and the patience of a micograph.  He was a born courtier.  Every courtier is a noctambulist.  The courtier prowls in the night, which is called power.  He carries a dark lantern in his hand.  He lights up the spot he wishes, and remains in darkness himself.  What he seeks with his lantern is not a man, it is a fool.  What he finds is the king.

Kings do not like to see those about them pretend to greatness.  Irony aimed at any one except themselves has a charm for them.  The talent of Barkilphedro consisted in a perpetual dwarfing of the peers and princes to the advantage of her Majesty’s stature, thus increased in proportion.  The master-key held by Barkilphedro was made with two sets of wards, one at each end, so as to open the inner apartments in both Josiana’s favourite residences—­Hunkerville House in London, Corleone Lodge at Windsor.  These two houses were part of the Clancharlie inheritance.  Hunkerville House was close to Oldgate.  Oldgate was a gate of London, which was entered by the Harwich