Calderon the Courtier, a Tale. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон

not the council. My precious Calderon, life would be dull without thee: how I rejoice at thy return, thou best inventor of pleasure that satiety ever prayed for! Nay, blush not: some men despise thee for thy talents: I do thee homage. By my great grandsire’s beard, it will be a merry time at court when I am monarch, and thou minister!”

      Calderon looked earnestly at the prince, but his scrutiny did not serve to dispel a certain suspicion of the royal sincerity that ever and anon came across the favourite’s most sanguine dreams. With all Philip’s gaiety, there was something restrained and latent in his ambiguous smile, and his calm, deep, brilliant eye. Calderon, immeasurably above his lord in genius, was scarcely, perhaps, the equal of that beardless boy in hypocrisy and craft, in selfish coldness, in matured depravity.

      “Well,” resumed the prince, “I pay you not these compliments without an object. I have need of you—great need; never did I so require your services as at this moment; never was there so great demand on your invention, your courage, your skill. Know, Calderon, I love!”

      “My prince,” said the marquis, smiling, “it is certainly not first love. How often has your highness—”

      “No,” interrupted the prince, hastily,—“no, I never loved till now. We never can love what we can easily win; but this, Calderon, this heart would be a conquest. Listen. I was at the convent chapel of St. Mary of the White Sword yesterday with the queen. Thou knowest that the abbess once was a lady of the chamber, and the queen loves her.”