Ah well, enough of Henry. I've also diced with other princes. Francis I rotting away with every known love disease under the sun – when he died the palace stank for weeks even though they scrubbed every ceiling, wall and floor. Catherine de Medici: wicked and wanton, the Queen of the Poison. Charles DC, who never made up his mind whether he was a man or a woman. Selim the sot: drunk on hashish, surrounded by his houris and, in the shadows, the stranglers ready to snuff out your life as easily as you would a candle flame. And what about Philip of Spain in his dark, gold-encrusted chambers of the Escorial? And we mustn't forget that mad bugger in Moscow, must we? Oh, I have seen the times and Satan knows it. But I am not afeared! Not me! Not Sir Roger Shallot, Lord of Burpham Manor, Knight of the Garter, Justice of the Peace. I give Satan as good as I get! I call him a bag pudding, an ice-brained, splay-footed gull. I make the sign of the fig with my little finger. I climb back into my bed and cuddle down between my two lovelies. So, you young men, remember, this: whatever nocturnal terrors come, there's nothing that a prayer, a spark of courage, a cup of wine and a lovely girl can't cure. I can't vouch for the first two but I certainly can for the last!
In the morning, as now, when Phoebus rolls his chariot across the ancient sky… Lord, what a silly phrase! My little chaplain and secretary, that decayed dotard, wants me to use words like that! He sits squirming on his little cushions waiting for me to continue my memoirs.