The deputy went within the traverse, the rest remaining without, while the Dean made a short address. After it was over
Lady Bacon took the child and brought it to the font, where the Dean attended in his surplice. Then the Earl Leicester approached near to the traverse, and there tarried until the deputy came forth, from whence they leisurely proceeded to the font, the deputy's train still borne, where she christened the child by the name of Elizabeth; which done the deputy retired back into the traverse again, and the nurse took the child, and came down, and there dressed it.
Now comes one of the most impressive and picturesque episodes in the story.
In the meantime, Mr. Philip Sidney came out of the Chapel called St. Edward's shrine having a towel on his left shoulder, and with him came Mr. Delves, bearing the basin and ewer. Then the deputy came forth, her train borne, and they two kneeling, she washed.
Imagine Philip Sidney, then twenty-three years old, appearing from the Confessor's Chapel, which as I have explained lies directly behind the altar, with his towel over his shoulder, to kneel before the good and charming Countess of Warwick--Philip Sidney, that exquisite and noble soul, the very type and pattern of all that is most beautiful and admirable in the age of Elizabeth.
Fair as he was brave, quick of wit as of affection, noble and generous in temper, dear to Elizabeth as to Spenser, the darling of the Court and of the camp; his learning and his genius made him the centre of the literary world which was springing into birth on English soil.
Poet, philosopher, chivalrous knight errant, grave councillor, what wonder that he was the idol of the whole country? And the story of his death, which we all know, but of which I, for one, never tire, was a fitting close to the thirty-two years of this Bayard without fear and without reproach. He threw away his life to save the army of his queen in Flanders. As he lay dying he called for water. But when it was brought and the bottle was put to his lips he saw a poor soldier dying near him, and bade them give it to him. "Thy necessity," he said, "is greater than mine." And so he died. This was the man who humbly served Lady Warwick, the deputy, at our baby's christening.