of a story in his own dominions, may here have softened his tone--the
master of the house, an innkeeper, as the king was standing by the fire,
with his hands on the back of a chair, kneeled down and kissed his hand
'privately,' saying he could not ask him who he was, but bid 'God bless
him, where he was going!'

Then, rallying after this touch of pathos, Charles took his hearers over
to Fecamp, in France--thence to Rouen, where, he said, in his easy,
irresistible way, 'I looked so poor that the people went into the rooms
before I went away, to see if I had not stolen something or other.'

With what reverence and sympathy did our Pepys listen; but he was forced
to hurry off to get Lord Berkeley a bed; and with 'much ado' (as one may
believe) he did get 'him to bed with My Lord Middlesex;' so, after
seeing these two peers of the realm in that dignified predicament--two
in a bed--'to my cabin again,' where the company were still talking of
the king's difficulties, and how his Majesty was fain to eat a piece of
bread and cheese out of a poor body's pocket; and, at a Catholic house,
how he lay a good while 'in the Priest's Hole, for privacy.'

In all these hairbreadth escapes--of which the king spoke with
infinite humour and good feeling--one name was perpetually
introduced:--George--George Villiers, _Villers_, as the royal narrator
called him; for the name was so pronounced formerly. And well he might;
for George Villiers had been his playmate, classfellow, nay, bedfellow
sometimes, in priests' holes; their names, their haunts, their hearts,
were all assimilated; and misfortune had bound them closely to each
other. To George Villiers let us now return; he is waiting for his royal
master on the other side of the Channel--in England. And a strange
character have we to deal with:--