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shoot up. The priest, master of the hydrography school, started to bow and considerately stopped; the young men, with joyous accord, bowed three times each, right knee bent, bonnet low in the left hand, gloves gripped at the stomach in the right.
    O’LiamRoe smiled widely. Lord d’Aubigny sketched a bow, advanced steadily and kissed the Prince of Barrow on both cheeks.
    ‘Man, you smell nice,’ said The O’LiamRoe appreciatively as they sat. ‘I see how it is. The O’Donnell, God save him, came back from France the very same, tasselled like a cushion and with a particularsmell. Excuse me.’ And grasping his secretary, he drew him into the circle. ‘My travelling ollave. You’ll forgive him. He had the manners all bled out of him in the water, and is dead sober on me today besides. He can talk Greek itself when he has the drop in: I got him to sing at the milking and every cow in it gave off pure alcohol.’
    Lord d’Aubigny was not quick-witted. For a moment he was wordless, the big handsome face reddening under the pearls. Behind, the two gallants were scarlet; and it was the priest who stepped in, his eye twinkling. ‘We are all glad to see you; and sorry to hear of the shocking voyage into harbour.’
    ‘Shocking! A Flemish galliasse. You can’t trust them. Criminally poor seamanship. Letters have been sent,’ said Lord d’Aubigny sharply, to reduce the levity he sensed behind him and suspected in front. ‘The King himself will make amends.’
    ‘Ah, no apologies,’ said O’LiamRoe, his oval, soft-whiskered face alight with freckles and good humour. ‘If you’d seen Thady Boy saving the navy: a kick, step and a lep and his hocks over the yardarm like a handful of syboes.…’
    Master Ballagh stood for a good deal; but he brought that to a halt. He said sourly, ‘The O’LiamRoe is sensible of course, my lord, of the honour done him by his grace the King in inviting him to France. Ireland is not a country of wealth naturally. Our crops are few and our roads are bad, so that—’
    ‘—Damn you!’ said O’LiamRoe with surprise. ‘There’s a fine bothar road to the Slieve Bloom alone that two cows would fit on, one lengthwise and the other athwart.’
    ‘—But the Prince of Barrow is as consequential and scholarly a man as you would be hard put to it to see in a city. And I am not saying so,’ added Thady painstakingly, ‘for the pay he gives me, for you would quarter yourself looking for it did you drop it from between your finger and thumb on a white sheet at midday itself.’
    There was an explosion, hardly covered, from the young men, but Lord d’Aubigny grimly persevered. ‘You and your principal know a little, I take it, of the present Court of France? You will be presented shortly to King Henri, and to the Queen who is, of course, Italian born. There are five young children.…’ He described, as plainly as he could, the public faces of the Crown and its suite, without a hint that the King’s wife and his mistress were at loggerheads; that the King’s friend the Constable supported the Queen; and that everyone distrusted the de Guises, who held the King’s love and most of his higher offices apportioned between them, and at altar, campaign or council table were first with their advice.
    ‘It is,’ said Lord d’Aubigny, ‘a gathering of people who cannot fail to impress you. A blossoming culture. A taste for beauty andconsiderable wealth. And consequently a certain state; a formality; a feeling for polite usage of some sort—’
    ‘We are not,’ said a bored voice from behind him, ‘permitted to duel’.
    ‘—And the wearing of hair on every part of the face,’ said its neighbour suavely, ‘is not now acceptable.’
    Without looking round, his lordship went on. ‘Fashions change, of course. But the King himself decides style and colour for his gentlemen, and it is usual for those at Court to conform. Please do not hesitate, if in need of a tailor, to seek my