"I have had a letter from his majesty, the King of France," he said, "informing me of your lordship's approaching arrival; and I only regretted that I did not know how I might serve you in anticipation of your coming, so that all might be prepared for you. Pray, my lord, be seated;" and placing a chair for him, he remained standing till the earl had taken his seat.
We can hardly bring our minds in the present day to believe that all this ceremonious respect, this ostentatious display of reverence for a fellow man, could have any effect upon the view which reasonable beings would take of a simple question of justice. But there was very little of the old Roman left in the sixteenth century. When men sold their loyalty and compounded for their treason, it was not to be supposed that justice was unmarketable. Cromwell, with all his faults and all his crimes, was the first who thoroughly purified the seat of justice, and taught the world that, in one country at least, neither rank nor wealth, nor even long conceded privilege, could prove a shield against the sword of justice. The immunities claimed by and granted to ambassadors were then enormous, and the influence of high rank often amounted to elevation above the law. The officer of the guard, though a man sensible of his duties and willing to perform them, was not less subject than others to the general feelings of the age and country in which he lived; and Monsieur de Malzais, though resolute even to obstinacy and bold to rashness, was habitually impressed with the reverence thus thought due to high station; and though they had both entered the room with a determination to require that Austin Jute should be at once given up to justice, the honours shown to his master by the ambassador of the haughtiest queen in Europe, rendered their demand very moderate in tone, and not very persevering in character.
To the surprise of both, however, Gowrie himself pressed for immediate investigation. He had been brought up in a sterner school, in which that spirit prevailed which afterwards shone forth with so strong a light in the higher and purer of the puritan party in England.
"I do not request your excellency," he said, after the officer of the guard had stated his object, and Monsieur de Malzais had preferred his charge, "to throw your protection over my servant, unless a clear case of justification can be made out in his favour; and then only so far as to shield him from long imprisonment and perhaps suffering, till it is ascertained whether the gentleman he has wounded lives or dies. I doubt not that the laws of the land will do justice between man and man, though the one be a mere servant and the other a person moving in a more elevated station of life, and I shall myself stay to see that it is so. But, in the first instance, as your own countryman and as my servant, I think you have every right to inquire whether he did, as he says, injure this gentleman in his own defence or not."