Simon Dale

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Simon Dale, by Anthony Hope

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Title: Simon Dale
Author: Anthony Hope

Release Date: January 10, 2007 [eBook #20328]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SIMON DALE
by
ANTHONY HOPE

T. Nelson & Sons London and Edinburgh Paris: 189, rue Saint-Jacques Leipzig: 35-37 K?nigstrasse
[Illustration: "It is only that a low laugh echoes distantly in my ear."]
[Illustration]

CONTENTS
I. The Child of Prophecy 3
II. The Way of Youth 18
III. The Music of the World 33
IV. Cydaria revealed 49
V. I am forbidden to forget 65
VI. An Invitation to Court 84
VII. What came of Honesty 103
VIII. Madness, Magic, and Moonshine 122
IX. Of Gems and Pebbles 140
X. Je Viens, Tu Viens, Il Vient 160
XI. The Gentleman from Calais 180
XII. The Deference of His Grace the Duke 201
XIII. The Meed of Curiosity 222
XIV. The King's Cup 244
XV. M. de Perrencourt whispers 263
XVI. M. de Perrencourt wonders 283
XVII. What befell my Last Guinea 303
XVIII. Some Mighty Silly Business 324
XIX. A Night on the Road 345
XX. The Vicar's Proposition 362
XXI. The Strange Conjuncture of Two Gentlemen 378
XXII. The Device of Lord Carford 396
XXIII. A Pleasant Penitence 414
XXIV. A Comedy before the King 434
XXV. The Mind of M. de Fontelles 451
XXVI. I come Home 468

SIMON DALE
CHAPTER I
THE CHILD OF PROPHECY
One who was in his day a person of great place and consideration, and has left a name which future generations shall surely repeat so long as the world may last, found no better rule for a man's life than that he should incline his mind to move in Charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth. This condition, says he, is Heaven upon Earth; and although what touches truth may better befit the philosopher who uttered it than the vulgar and unlearned, for whom perhaps it is a counsel too high and therefore dangerous, what comes before should surely be graven by each of us on the walls of our hearts. For any man who lived in the days that I have seen must have found much need of trust in Providence, and by no whit the less of charity for men. In such trust and charity I have striven to write: in the like I pray you to read.
I, Simon Dale, was born on the seventh day of the seventh month in the year of Our Lord sixteen-hundred-and-forty-seven. The date was good in that the Divine Number was thrice found in it, but evil in that it fell on a time of sore trouble both for the nation and for our own house; when men had begun to go about saying that if the King would not keep his promises it was likely that he would keep his head as little; when they who had fought for freedom were suspecting that victory had brought new tyrants; when the Vicar was put out of his cure; and my father, having trusted the King first, the Parliament afterwards, and at last neither the one nor the other, had lost the greater part of his substance, and fallen from wealth to straitened means: such is the common reward of an honest patriotism wedded to an open mind. However, the date, good or bad, was none of my doing, nor indeed, folks whispered, much of my parents' either, seeing that destiny overruled the affair, and Betty Nasroth, the wise woman, announced its imminence more than a year beforehand. For she predicted the birth, on the very day whereon I came into the world, within a mile of the parish church, of a male child who--and the utterance certainly had a lofty sound about it--should love where the King loved, know what the King hid, and drink of the King's cup. Now, inasmuch as none lived within the limits named by Betty Nasroth, save on the one side sundry humble labourers, whose progeny could expect no such fate, and on the other my Lord and Lady Quinton, who were wedded but a month before my birthday, the prophecy was fully as pointed as it had any need to be, and caused to my parents no small questionings. It was the third clause or term of the prediction that gave most concern alike to my mother and to my father; to my mother, because, although of discreet mind and a sound Churchwoman, she was from her earliest