BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL
From Century Magazine
OF GREATNESS INTIMATELY VIEWED
"Oh, but they are beyond praise," said Cynthia Allonby, enraptured, "and certainly you
should have presented them to the Queen."
"Her majesty already possesses a cup of that ware," replied Lord Pevensey. "It was one of
her New Year's gifts, from Robert Cecil. Hers is, I believe, not quite so fine as either of
yours; but then, they tell me, there is not the like of this pair in England, nor indeed on
the hither side of Cataia."
He set the two pieces of Chinese pottery upon the shelves in the south corner of the room.
These cups were of that sea-green tint called céladon, with a very wonderful glow and
radiance. Such oddities were the last vogue at court in this year of grace 1593: and
Cynthia could not but speculate as to what monstrous sum Lord Pevensey had paid for
this his last gift to her.
Now he turned, smiling, a really superb creature in his blue and gold. "I had another
message from the Queen--"
"George," Cynthia said, with fond concern, "it frightens me to see you thus foolhardy, in
tempting alike the Queen's anger and the Plague."
"Eh, as goes the Plague, it spares nine out of ten," he answered, lightly. "The Queen, I
grant you, is another pair of sleeves, for an irritated Tudor spares nobody."
But Cynthia Allonby kept silence, and did not exactly smile, while she appraised her
famous young kinsman. She was flattered by, and a little afraid of, the gay self-
confidence which led anybody to take such chances. Two weeks ago it was that the
painted terrible old Queen had named Lord Pevensey to go straightway into France,
where rumour had it, King Henri was preparing to renounce the Reformed Religion, and
making his peace with the Pope: and for two weeks Pevensey had lingered, on one
pretence or another, at his house in London, with the Plague creeping about the city like
an invisible incalculable flame, and the Queen asking questions at Windsor. Of all the
monarchs that had ever reigned in England, Elizabeth was the least used to having her
orders disregarded. Meanwhile Lord Pevensey came every day to the Marquis of
Falmouth's lodgings at Deptford; and every day Lord Pevensey pointed out to the
marquis's daughter that Pevensey, whose wife had died in childbirth a year back, did not
