East, West
“Fawning yet fearless; possessed of a certain saucy vulgarity, he gets away with it by virtue of his confidence-man’s charm. However, as time passes, the ingratiating aspects of his stance are emphasised; the sea-dog raffishness wears a little thin. As do his shoes.= His hope. It is of what?Obvious answers first. He hopes for preferment. He wants to tie the Queen’s favour to his helmet, like a knight in a romance. (He owns no helmet.) He has hopes of cash, and of three tall ships, Niña Pinta San...ta Maria; of, in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, sailing across the ocean blue. But, on his first arrival at court, when the Queen herself asked him what he desired, he bowed over her olive hand and, with his lips a breath away from the great ring of her power, murmured a single, dangerous word.‘Consummation.’— These unspeakable foreigners! The nerve! ‘Consummation’, indeed! And then following in her footsteps, month after month, as if he stood a chance.
His coarse epistles, his tuneless serenades beneath her casement windows, obliging her to have them closed, shutting out the cooling breeze.MoreLess
His coarse epistles, his tuneless serenades beneath her casement windows, obliging her to have them closed, shutting out the cooling breeze.MoreLess
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