Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/87

Rh the same character, to which the Duke of Monmouth added a sword and belt from his own side, so that he looked, as old Downes the prompter assures us, more like a dressed-up ape, or a quiz on the French, than Sir Arthur Addle. The jest took at once, King Charles and his whole Court falling into an excess of laughter as soon as he appeared upon the stage, and the French showing their chagrin at the personality and folly of the imitation. The sword, which the Duke had buckled on the actor with his own hands, was kept by Nokes to his dying day.

It was in the character of Almahide in "The Conquest of Granada," and while wearing her broad-brimmed hat and waist-belt in the prologue to the same play, that Charles became more than ever enamoured of Nelly. A satirist of the time has expressed the result of the performance in a couplet not wholly destitute of force—

while Granville, who enjoyed the friendship of Waller, and lived to be the patron of Pope, has told the result in his poem called "The Progress of Beauty:"