A Child's History of England.182

The new favourite got on fast. He was made a viscount [子爵], he was made Duke of Buckingham, he was made a marquis [侯爵], he was made Master of the Horse [弼马温], he was made Lord High Admiral - and the Chief Commander of the gallant English forces that had dispersed the Spanish Armada, was displaced [取代] to make room for him. He had the whole kingdom at his disposal [任他处置], and his mother sold all the profits and honours of the State, as if she had kept a shop. He blazed all over with diamonds and other precious stones, from his hatband and his earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an ignorant presumptuous [胆大妄为的], swaggering [趾高气扬的] compound of knave [不诚实的人] and fool, with nothing but his beauty and his dancing to recommend him. This is the gentleman who called himself his Majesty's dog and slave, and called his Majesty Your Sowship. His Sowship called him Steenie; it is supposed, because that was a nickname for Stephen, and because St. Stephen was generally represented in pictures as a handsome saint.

His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits' end [被迫绞尽脑汁] by his trimming [调整] between the general dislike of the Catholic religion at home, and his desire to wheedle [讨好] and flatter it abroad, as his only means [财源] of getting a rich princess for his son's wife: a part of whose fortune he might cram into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles - or as his Sowship called him, Baby Charles - being now Prince of Wales, the old project of a marriage with the Spanish King's daughter had been revived [恢复] for him; and as she could not marry a Protestant without leave [permission] from the Pope, his Sowship himself secretly and meanly wrote to his Infallibility [绝对正确的教皇], asking for it. The negotiation for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger space in great books, than you can imagine, but the upshot [结局] of it all {移到upshot之前} is, that when it had been held off by [delay] the Spanish Court for a long time, Baby Charles and Steenie set off [出发] in disguise as Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. John Smith, to see the Spanish Princess; that Baby Charles pretended to be desperately in love with her, and jumped off walls to look at her, and made a considerable fool of himself in a good [表强调] many ways; that she was called Princess of Wales and that the whole Spanish Court believed Baby Charles to be all but [except] dying for her sake, as he expressly [clearly and firmly] told them he was; that Baby Charles and Steenie came back to England, and were received with as much rapture [狂喜] as if [就好像] they had been a blessing to it; that Baby Charles had actually fallen in love with Henrietta Maria, the French King's sister, whom he had seen in Paris; that he thought it a wonderfully fine and princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards, all through; and that he openly said, with a chuckle, as soon as he was safe and sound [unharmed] at home again, that the Spaniards were great fools to have believed him.

六级/考研单词: disperse, displace, disposition, blaze, diamond, precious, ignorant, compound, majesty, slave, nickname, handsome, saint, wit, trim, dislike, catholic, desire, flatter, princess, cram, revive, disguise, deceive