Looking at certain details
of that countenance you would have thought him a debauched husbandman,
or a miserly pedler; and yet, above these vague resemblances and the
decrepitude of a dying old man, the king, the man of power, rose
supreme. His eyes, of a light yellow, seemed at first sight extinct;
but a spark of courage and of anger lurked there, and at the slightest
touch it could burst into flames and cast fire about him. The doctor
was a stout burgher, with a florid face, dressed in black, peremptory,
greedy of gain, and self-important. These two personages were framed,
as it were, in that panelled chamber, hung with high-warped tapestries
of Flanders, the ceiling of which, made of carved beams, was blackened
by smoke. The furniture, the bed, all inlaid with arabesques in
pewter, would seem to-day more precious than they were at that period
when the arts were beginning to produce their choicest masterpieces.
"Lampreys are not good for you," replied the physician.
That title, recently substituted for the former term of
"myrrh-master," is still applied to the faculty in England.
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