’My lord, have you got your lesson by heart, or speak you out of the book?’ asked the king, taking the volume.

‘Sir,’ the marquis replied, ’if you could read my heart, it may be you might find it there; or if your majesty please to get it by heart, I will lend you my book.’

‘I would willingly borrow it,’ said the king.

‘Nay,’ said the marquis, ’I will lend it to you upon these conditions:  first, that you read it; and, second, that you make use of it.’

Here, glancing round, well knowing the nature of the soil upon which his words fell, he saw ’some of the new-made lords displeased, fretting and biting their thumbs,’ and thus therefore resumed:—­

’But, sir, I assure you that no man was so much for the absolute power of the king as Aristotle.  If your majesty will allow me the book again, I will show you one remarkable passage to that purpose.’

Having searched the volume for a moment, and found it, he read as follows:—­

   ’Harpaghes first his tale tolde,
    And said, how that the strength of kinges
    Is mightiest of alle thinges. 
    For king hath power over man,
    And man is he, which reson can,
    As he, which is of his nature
    The most noble creature
    Of alle tho that God hath wrought. 
    And by that skill it seemeth nought, (for that reason)
    He saith that any erthly thing
    May be so mighty as a king. 
    A king may spille, a king may save,
    A king may make of lorde a knave,
    And of a knave a lord also;
    The power of a king stant so
    That he the lawes overpasseth. 
    What he will make lasse, he lasseth;
    What he will make more, he moreth;
    And as a gentil faucon soreth,
    He fleeth, that no man him reclaimeth. 
    But he alone all other tameth,
    And slant him self of lawe fre.’

’There, my liege!  So much for Aristotle and the kinghood!  But think not he taketh me with him all the way.  By our Lady, I go not so far.’

Lifting his head again, he saw, to his wish, that ’divers new-made lords’ had ‘slunk out of the room.’

‘My lord,’ said the king, ’at this rate you will drive away all my nobility.’

‘I protest unto your majesty,’ the marquis replied, ’I am as new a made lord as any of them all, but I was never called knave or rogue so much in all my life as I have been since I received this last honour:  and why should they not bear their shares?’

In high good-humour with his success, he told the story the same evening to lady Glamorgan in Dorothy’s presence.  It gave her ground for thought:  she wondered that the marquis should think the king required such lessoning.  She had never dreamed that a man and his office are not only metaphysically distinct, but may be morally separate things; she had hitherto taken the office as the pledge for the man, the show as the pledge for the reality; and now therefore her notion of the king received a rude shock from his best friend.