“I could see you drop dead this minute from paralysis of the brain cells and burst into uninhibited applause.”

“I must apologize for these damned entrances,’ said Francis Crawford of Lymond. ‘I feel Tom here never knows if he should send for a bishop or start a round of applause.”

“Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, "Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers.”

“ ‘I’m fairly bursting tae ken how ye guessed I spoke Scots?’ Lymond looked up. Superficial pain, withstood or ignored for quite a long time, had made his eyes heavy, but they were brimming with laughter. ‘Well, God,’ he said. ‘In the water, you were roaring your head off at a bloody bull elephant called Hughie.”

“That day, engrossed together in the fate of the child, he met her mind to mind and fell in love with her, with every grain of his spirit and cell of his body; with the essential finality of death.”

“You’re going to declare a rest period?’ asked Jerott. Leisure, with Gabriel there, seemed too good to be true. ‘Rumour being what it is, I imagine it will have declared itself by now,’ Lymond said. ‘Yes. We shall take three days from our labours to relax. Provided Sir Graham understands that by midday tomorrow St Mary’s will be empty and all the men at arms and half the officers whoring in Peebles.’ In the half-dark you could guess at Gabriel’s smile. ‘Do you think I don’t know human nature?’ he said. ‘They are bound by no vows. But as they learn to respect you, they will do as you do.’ ‘That’s what we’re all afraid of,’ said Jerott; and there was a ripple of laughter and a flash of amusement, he saw, from Lymond himself.”

“You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.”