SIR THOMAS MORE.

SIR THOMAS MORE.A HISTORICAL ROMANCE.FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.XIV.Thefollowing day, toward noon, Thomas More was seated, as usual after dinner, in the midst of his children. No one could discover in his countenance any trace of anxiety. He conversed with his customary cheerfulness. Margaret was a little pale, and it was evident that she had been weeping. She alone kept silence and held aloof from Sir Thomas. Near the window overlooking the garden, on the side next the river, sat Lady More engaged in knitting, according to her invariable habit, and murmuring between her teeth against the monkey, which had three or four times carried off her ball of yarn and tangled the thread.Sir Thomas from time to time raised his eyes to the clock; he then began to interrogate his children about the work each had done during the morning. At last he called the little jester, who was pulling the dog’s ears and turning summersaults in one corner of the room, trying to make his master laugh, whom he found less cheerful than usual.“Come hither,” said Sir Thomas. “Henry Pattison, do you hear me?”The fool paid no attention to what his master said to him.“Henry Pattison!” cried Sir Thomas.“Master, I haven’t any ears.” He turned a summersault and madea hideous grimace, which he thought charming.“Since you have no ears, you can hear me as well where you are. Understand, then, little fool, that I have given you to the lord-mayor. I have written to him about you this morning, and I have no doubt but that he will send for you to-day or to-morrow.”Had a pail of boiling water been thrown on the poor child, he could not have jumped up more suddenly. On hearing these words he ran toward Sir Thomas, and, throwing himself at his feet, burst into a torrent of tears.“What have I done, master?” he cried. “How have I offended you? Why have you not told me? Forgive me, I will never do so any more; but don’t drive me away. I will never, never displease you again! No! no! don’t send me away!”“My child,” said Sir Thomas, “you are mistaken. I am not at all displeased or vexed with you; on the contrary. You will be very happy with the lord-mayor; he will take good care of you, and that is why I prefer giving you to him.”“No! no!” cried Henry Pattison, sobbing. “Don’t let me eave you, I implore you! Do anything you please with me, only don’t send me away. Why is it you no longer want me? Dame Margaret,take pity on me, and beg your father to let me stay!”But Margaret, usually very willing to do what she was requested, turned away her head and paid no attention to this petition.“Master, keep me!” he cried in despair. “Why do you not want me with you any longer?”“My child,” said Sir Thomas, “I am very much distressed at it; but I am too poor now to keep you in my house, to furnish you with scarlet coats and all the other things to which you are accustomed, You will be infinitely better off with the lord-mayor.”“I want nothing with the lord-mayor. I will have no more scarlet coats nor gold lace; and if I am too expensive to feed, I will go eat with the dog in the yard. You don’t send him away; he is very happy. It is true that he guards the house, and that I—I am good for nothing. Well, I will work; yes, I will work. I implore you, only keep me. I will work. I don’t want to leave you, my dear master. Have pity on me!”Sir Thomas was greatly disturbed. Alas! his heart was already so full, it required so much courage to conceal the state of his soul, he was in such an agony, that he felt if the dwarf said any more he would be forced to betray himself.Assuredly it was not the thought of being separated from his jester that afflicted him to such a degree, but the attachment of this deformed and miserable child, his tears, his entreaties, his dread of losing him, reminded him but too forcibly of the grief which later must seize on the hearts of his own children; for the composure which they saw him maintain at this moment alone prevented them from indulging in expressionsof affection far more harrowing still.“Margaret,” he said, “you will take care of him, will you not?” And fearing he had said too much, he arose hurriedly, and went to examine a vase filled with beautiful flowers, which was placed on the table in the centre of the apartment, and thus concealed the tears which arose and filled his eyes. But the dwarf followed, and fell on his knees before him.“Come, come, do not distress yourself,” said Sir Thomas; “I will take care of you. Be quiet. Go get your dinner; it is your hour now.”Sir Thomas approached the window. While he stood there William Roper entered, and, going to him, told him that the boat was ready and the tide was up. More was seized with an inexpressible grief. For an instant he lost sight of everything around him; his head swam.“Whither go you?” asked his wife.“Dear Alice, I must to London.”“To London?” she replied sharply. “But we need you here! Why go to London? Is it to displease his majesty further, in place of staying quietly here in your own house, and doing simply whatever they ask of you? Well did I say that you did wrong in giving up your office. That is what has made the king displeased with you. You ought to write to Master Cromwell; he has a very obliging manner, and I am sure that all this could be very easily arranged; but you are ever loath to give up anything.”“It is indispensably necessary for me to go,” replied Sir Thomas. “I much prefer remaining. Come!” he said.“Father! father!” exclaimed allthe children, “we will go with you to the boat.”“Lead me, dear papa,” said the youngest.Sir Thomas cast a glance toward Margaret, but she had disappeared. He supposed she did not wish to see him start, and he was grieved. However, he felt that it would be one trial less.“No, my children,” he replied; “I would rather that you come not with me.”“Why not, dear father?” they cried in accents of surprise and regret.“The wind is too strong, and the weather is not fair enough,” said Sir Thomas.“Yes, yes!” they cried, and threw their arms around his neck.“You cannot go to-day. I do not wish it,” said Sir Thomas in a decided manner.Words cannot describe the sufferings of this great man; he knew that he would no more behold his home or his children, and that, determined not to take the oath which he regarded as the first step toward apostasy in a Christian, they would not pardon him. He cast a last look upon his family and hurried toward the door.“You will come back to-morrow, will you not, father?” cried the children in one voice.He could not reply; but this question re-echoed sadly in the depths of his soul. He hastened on still more rapidly. Roper, who knew no more than the others, was alarmed at the alteration he saw in the features of Sir Thomas, and began to fear that something had happened still more distressing than what he had already heard. However, More had told them so far that it was impossible for him to be found guilty in the affair of theHoly Maid of Kent, but Roper knew not even who she was. The absence of Margaret alone seemed to him inexplicable. Entirely absorbed in these reflections, he followed Sir Thomas, who walked with extraordinary rapidity, and they very soon reached the green gate.“Come, my son,” said Sir Thomas, “hasten and open the gate; time presses.”Roper felt in his belt; he found he had not the key.“I have not the key,” he said. “I must return.”“O God!” exclaimed Sir Thomas when he found himself alone; and he seated himself on the step of the little stairway, for he felt no longer able to stand on his feet.“My God!” he cried, “to go without seeing Margaret! Oh! I shall see her again; if not here, at least before I die. Adieu, my cherished home! Adieu, thou loved place of my earthly sojourn! Why dost thou keep within thy walls those whom I love? If they had left thee, then I could abandon thee without regret. I shall see them no more. This is the last time I shall descend these steps, and that this little gate will close upon me. Be still, my soul, be still; I will not listen to you; I will not hear you; you would make me weak. I have no heart; I have no feeling; I do not think. Well, since you will have me speak, tell me rather why this creeping insect, why this straw, has been crushed in the road? Ah! here is Roper.”He at once arose. They went out and descended to the boat. Then Sir Thomas seated himself in the stern, and spoke not a word. Roper detached the cable, and, giving a push with the bar against the terrace wall, the boat immediatelyput off and entered the current of the stream.“This is the end,” said Sir Thomas, looking behind him. He changed his seat, and remained with his eyes fixed upon his home until in the distance it disappeared for ever from his view. He continued, however, gazing in that direction even when the house could no longer be seen, and after some time he observed some one running along the bank of the river, which ascended and descended, and from time to time waving a white handkerchief. He was not able to distinguish whether it was a man or a woman, and told Roper to approach a little nearer to the bank. Then his heart throbbed; he thought he caught a glimpse of, he believed he recognized, Margaret, and he immediately arose to his feet.“Roper! Margaret! there is Margaret! What can be wrong?”They drew as near the bank as they could, and Margaret (for it was indeed she) leaped with an unparalleled dexterity from the shore into the boat.“What is it, my dear child?” exclaimed Sir Thomas, with eager anxiety.“Nothing,” replied Margaret.“Nothing! Then why have you come?”“Because I wanted to come! I also am going to London.” And looking round for a place, she seated herself with a determined air. “Push off now, William,” she said authoritatively.“My daughter!” exclaimed Sir Thomas.She made no reply, and More saw that she had a small package under her left arm. He understood very well Margaret’s design, but had not the courage to speak of it to her.“Margaret, I would rather youhad remained quietly at Chelsea,” he said.She made no reply.“Your mother and sisters need you!”“Nobody in this world has need of me,” replied the young girl coldly, “and Margaret has no longer any use for anybody.”“Margaret, you pain me sorely.”“I feel no pain myself! Row not so rapidly,” she said to Roper; “I am in no hurry; it is early. Frail bark, couldst thou only go to the end of the earth, how gladly would I steer thee thither!” And she stamped her foot on the bottom of the boat with passionate earnestness.Sir Thomas wished to speak, but his strength failed him. His eyes filled with tears, and, fearing to let them flow, he bowed his head on his hands. It was the first time in her life that Margaret had disobeyed him, and now it was for his own sake. Besides, he knew her thoroughly, and he felt sure that nothing could change the resolution she had taken not to leave him at that moment.They all three sat in silence. The father dared not speak; Roper was engaged in rowing the boat; and Margaret had enough in her own heart to occupy her. She became pale and red alternately, and turned from time to time to see if they were approaching the city. As soon as she perceived the spires of the churches she arose.“We are approaching the lions’ den,” she cried; “let us see if they will tear Daniel.”And again she took her seat.They were soon within the limits of the city, and found, to their astonishment, the greatest noise and excitement prevailing. Crowds ofthe lowest portion of the populace thronged the bridges, were running along the wharves, and gesticulating in the most violent manner. This vile mob, composed of malefactors and idlers, with abuse in their mouths and hatred in their hearts, surges up occasionally from the lowest ranks of society, of which they are the disgrace and the enemy, to proclaim disorder and destruction; just as a violent storm disturbs the depths of a foul marsh, whose poisonous exhalations infect and strike with death every living being who imprudently approaches it. At such times it takes the names of “the people” and “the nation,” because it has a right to neither, and only uses them as a cloak for its hideous deformity and a covering for its rags, its filthy habiliments. They buy up its shouts, its enthusiasm, its incendiaries, terrors, and assassinations; then, when its day is ended, when it is wearied, drunk, and covered with crimes, it returns to seethe in its iniquitous depths and wallow in contempt and oblivion.Cromwell was well aware of this. Delighted, he moved about among the rabble, and smiled an infamous smile as he heard the cries that burst on the air and pierced the ear: “Long live Queen Anne! Death to the traitors who would dare oppose her!”“And yet men say,” he repeated to himself, “that it is difficult to do what you will. See! it is Cromwell who has done all this. Not long since the streets resounded with the name of Queen Catherine; to-day it is that of Anne they proclaim. What was good yesterday is bad to-day; is there any difference? What are the masses? An agglomeration of stupid and ignorant creatures who can be made tohowl for a few pieces of silver, who take falsehood for wine and truth for water. And it is Cromwell who has done all this. Cromwell has reconciled the people and the king; he has made his reckoning with virtue, and seen that nothing would remain for him. He has then taken one of the scales of the balance; he has placed therein the heart of a man branded and dishonored by an impure passion, which has sufficed to carry him out of himself; the beam has inclined toward him. He has added crimes; he has added blood, remorse, treason; he will heap it up until it runs over, rather than suffer him to recover himself in the least. Shout, rabble! Ay, shout! for ye shout for me.” And he looked at those red faces, blazing, perspiring; those features, disfigured by vice and debauchery; those mouths, gaping open to their ears, and which yet seemed not large enough to give vent to their thousand discordant and piercing sounds.“There is something, then, viler than Cromwell,” he went on with a fiendish glee; “there is something more degraded and baser than he. Come, you must confess it, ye moralists, that crime, in white shirts and embroidered laces, is less hideous than that which walks abroad all naked, and with its deformities exposed to the bold light of day.”He looked toward the river, but the light bark which carried Sir Thomas and his party escaped his keen vision: carried along by the force of the current, she shot swiftly as an arrow under the low arches of the first bridge.“Alas!” said Sir Thomas, “what is going on here?”He looked at Margaret and regretted she was there; but she seemed entirely unmoved. Margarethad but one thought, and that admitted of no other.On approaching the Tower they were still more surprised to see an immense crowd assembled and thronging every avenue of approach. The bridges and decks of the vessels were covered with people, and there seemed to be a general commotion and excitement.“Thither she comes,” said some women who were dragging their children after them at the risk of having them crushed by the crowd.“I saw her yesterday,” said another. “She is lovely; the fairest plumes on her head.”“And how her diamonds glittered! You should have seen them.”“Be still there, gabblers!” said a fat man mounted on a cask, leaning against a wall. “You keep me from hearing what they are shouting down yonder.”“My troth! she is more magnificent than the other.”“They say we are to have fountains of wine at the coronation, and a grand show at Westminster Hall.”“All is not gold that glitters,” said the fat man, who appeared to have as much good sense as flesh.He made a sign to a man dressed like himself, who advanced with difficulty through the crowd, pushing his way by dint of effort and perseverance. He seemed to be swimming on a wave of heads, each oscillation of which threw him back in spite of the determined resistance he made. The other, perceiving this, extended his hand to him, and, supporting himself by a bar of iron he found near, he drew his companion up beside him.“Eh! good-day to you, Master Cooping. A famous day, is it not? All this scum goes to drink about five hundred gallons of beer for the monks.”“May they go to the devil!” replied the brewer, “and may they die of thirst! Hark how they yell! Do you know what they are saying? Just now I heard one of them crying: ‘Long live the new chancellor.’ They know no more about the names than the things. This Audley is one of the most adroit knaves the world has ever seen. There is in him, I warrant, enough matter to make a big scoundrel, a good big vender of justice. I have known him as an advocate; and as for the judge, I remember him still.” As he said this he struck the leathern purse he carried in the folds of his belt.“These lawyers are all scoundrels; they watch like thieves in a market for a chance to fleece the poor tradesmen.”Above these men, who complained so harshly of the lawyers and of those who meted out justice to all comers, there was a window, very high and narrow, placed in a turret that formed the angle of a building of good appearance and solid construction. This window was open, the curtains were drawn back, and there could be seen coming and going the heads of several men, who appeared and disappeared from time to time, and who, after having looked out and surveyed the river and the streets adjacent, returned to the extremity of the apartment.This house belonged to a rich merchant of Lucca named Ludovico Bonvisi; he was a man of sterling integrity, and in very high repute among the rich merchants of the city. Established in England for a great number of years, he had been intimate with Sir Thomas More at the time the latter was Sheriff of London, and he had ever since retained for him a particularfriendship and esteem. On this day Ludovico had invited four or five of his friends to his house; he was seated in the midst of them, in a large chair covered with green velvet, before a table loaded with rare and costly wines, which were served in decanters of rock crystal banded with hoops of silver. There were goblets of the same costly metal, richly carved, and a number of these were ornamented with precious stones and different kinds of enamel. Superb fruits arranged in pyramids on rare porcelain china, confectioneries, sweetmeats of all kinds and in all sorts of figures, composed the collation he offered his guests, among whom were John Story, Doctor of Laws; John Clement, a physician of great celebrity, and most thoroughly versed in the Greek language and the ancient sciences; William Rastal, the famous jurist; his friend John Boxol, a man of singular erudition; and Nicholas Harpesfield, who died in prison for the Catholic faith during the reign of Elizabeth. They were all seated around the table, but appeared to be much more interested in their conversation than in the choice viands which had been prepared for them by their host. John Story, particularly, exclaimed with extraordinary bitterness against all that was being done in the kingdom.“No!” said he, “nothing could be more servile or more vile than the course Parliament has pursued in all this affair. We can scarcely believe that these men, not one of whom in his heart approves of the divorce and the silly and impious pretensions of the king, have never dared to utter a single word in favor of justice and equity! No, each one has watched his neighbor to see whathewould do; and whenthere has been question for debate, they have found no other arguments than simply to pass all that was asked of them. The only thing they have dared to suggest has been to insert in this shameful bill that those who should speak against the new queen and against the supremacy of the king would be punished only so far as they had done somaliciously. Beautiful and grand restriction! They think to have gained a great deal by inserting that, so closely are they pursued by their fears.“When they have instituted proceedings against those unfortunates who shall have offended them, do you believe that Master Audley, and Cromwell, and all the knaves of that class will be at great pains to have entered a well-proven maliciousness? No; it is a halter that will fit all necks—their own as well as those of all others. I have often told them this, but they will believe nothing. Later they will repent it; we shall then be in the net, and there will be no way to get out of it. Yes, I say, and I see it with despair, there is no more courage in the English nation, and very soon we shall let ourselves be seized one by one, like unfledged birds trembling on the edge of their devastated nest.”“It is very certain,” replied William Rastal, “that I predict nothing good from all these innovations; there is nothing more immoral and more dangerous to society than to let it become permeated, under any form whatever, with the idea of divorce—at least, unless we wish it to become transformed into a vast hospital of orphans abandoned to the chance of public commiseration, into a camp of furious ravishers, excited to revenge and mutual destruction. Take away the indissolubilityof marriage, and you destroy at the same blow the only chances of happiness and peace in the interior and domestic life of man, in order to replace them by suspicions, jealousies, crimes, revenge, and corruption.”“Or rather,” said John Clement, “it will be necessary to reduce women to a condition of slavery, as in the ancient republics, and place them in the ranks of domestic animals.”“And, as a natural consequence, be ourselves degraded with them,” cried John Story, “since we are their brothers and their sons.”“With this base cowardice in Parliament, all is possible,” interrupted Harpesfield, “and I do not see how we are to arrest it. When they no longer regard an oath as an inviolable and sacred thing, what guarantee is left among men? You know, I suppose, what the Archbishop of Canterbury has done with the king’s approval, in Westminster even, at the moment of being consecrated?”“No!” they all answered.“He took four witnesses aside before entering the sanctuary, and declared to them—he, Cranmer—that the antiquity of the usage and custom of his predecessors requiring that he should take the oath of fidelity to the pope on receiving the pallium from him, he intended, notwithstanding, to pledge himself to nothing in opposition to the reforms the king might desire to make in the church, of which he recognized him as the sole head. What think you of the invention of this preservative of the obligations that bear the sanctity and solemnity of an oath made at the foot of the altar, in presence of all the people, accustomed to listen to and see it faithfully observed? That proceedingsufficiently describes the age in which we live, our king, and this man.”“But everybody knows very well that Cranmer is an intriguer, void of faith or law,” replied Rastal, “who has been foisted into his present position in order to do the will of the king and accommodate himself to his slightest desires.”“He has given him a wife,” said John Clement, pouring out a glass of Cyprus wine, whose transparent color testified to its excellent quality; “I verily believe she will not be the last.”“What kind of a face has she, this damsel Boleyn? Is she dark or fair? Fair, without doubt; for the other was dark. This is perfect nectar, Ludovico! Have you more of it?”“You are right; she has lovely blue eyes. She sings and dances charmingly.”“How much more, Ludovico? A small barrel—hem!—of the last invoice?Excellentissimo, Signor Ludovico!”“Well, we will see her pass very soon; they escort her to the Tower, where she will remain until the coronation. They say the king has had the apartments in the Tower furnished with an unparalleled magnificence.”“Yes; and to sustain that magnificence he is contracting debts every day, and all his revenues do not cover his expenses.”“A good king is a good thing,” said Harpesfield; “but nothing is worse than a bad one, and the good ones are so rare!”“That is because,” replied Boxol, who was very deliberate, “the power, renown, and flattery surrounding the throne tend so much to corrupt and encourage the passions of a man that it is very difficultfor him, when seated there, to maintain himself without committing any faults. Besides, my masters, we must remember that the faults of private individuals, often quite as shameful, remain unknown, while those of a king are exposed to all eyes and counted on all fingers.”“Well,” said John Clement; “but this one is certainly somewhat weighty, and I would not care to be burdened by having his sins charged to my account, to be held in reserve against the day of the last judgment.”“Good Bonvisi, give me a little of that dish which has nothing in common with thebrouet spartiate.”“A good counsellor and a true friend,” said John Story—“that is what is always wanting to princes.”“When they have them, they don’t know how to keep them,” said Ludovico. “See what has happened to More! Was not this a brilliant light which the king has concealed under a bushel?”“Assuredly,” replied Boxol; “he is an admirable man, competent for, and useful in, any position.”“He is a true Christian,” said Harpesfield; “amiable, moderate, wise, benevolent, disinterested. At the height of prosperity, as in a humble position, you find him always the same, considering only his duty and the welfare of others. He seems to regard himself as the born servant and the friend of justice.”“Hold, sirs!” replied Clement, turning around on his chair. “There is one fact which cannot be denied; which is, that nothing but religion can render a man ductile. Otherwise he is like to iron mixed with brimstone. We rely upon him, we confide in his face and in the strength of his goodness; but suddenlyhe falls and breaks in your hands as soon as you wish to make some use of him.”“There must be a furious amount of sulphur in his majesty’s heart,” replied Harpesfield, “for he is going to burn, in Yorkshire, four miserable wretches accused of heresy. For what? I know not; for having wished, perhaps, to do as he has done—get rid of a wife of whom he was tired! There is a fifth, who, more adroit, has appealed to him as supreme head of the church; he has been immediately justified, and Master Cromwell set him at liberty. Thus the king burns heretics at the same time that he himself separates from the church. All these actions are horrible, and nothing can be imagined more absurd and at the same time more criminal.”“As for me,” replied Clement, who had been watering his sugared fruits with particular care for a quarter of an hour, “I have been very much edified by the pastoral letter of my Lord Cranmer to his majesty. Have you seen it, Boxol?”“No,” replied Boxol, who was not disposed to treat this matter so lightly as Master Clement, as good an eater as he was a scholar, and what they call abon vivant; “these things make me very sick, and I don’t care to speak of them lightly or while dining.”“For which reason, my friend,” replied Clement, “you are excessively lean—the inevitable consequence of the reaction of anxiety of soul upon its poor servant, the body; for there are many fools who confound all and disown the soul, because they are ashamed of their hearts and can discern only their bodies. As if we could destroy that which God has made, or discover the knots of the lines he has hidden! He has willed that manshould be at the same time spirit and matter, and that these two should be entirely united; and very cunning must he be who will change that union one iota. They will search in vain for the place of the soul; they will no more find where it is than where it is not. Would you believe—but this is a thing I keep secret because of the honor of our science—that I have a pupil who asserts that we have no soul, because, says this beardless doctor, he has never been able to distinguish the moment when the soul escaped from the body of the dying! Do you not wonder at the force of that argument? And would it not be in fact a very beautiful thing to observe, and a singular spectacle to see, our souls suddenly provided with large and handsome wings of feathers, or hair, or some other material, to use in flying around and ascending whither God calls them? Now, dear friends, believe what I tell you: the more we learn, the more we perceive that we know nothing. Our intelligence goes only so far as to enable us to understand effects, to gather them together, to describe them, and in some cases to reproduce them; but as for the causes, that is an order of things into which it is absolutely useless to wish to penetrate.”“Come, now, here is Clement going into his scientific dissertations, in place of telling us what was in Cranmer’s letter!” cried Ludovico, interrupting him.“Ah! that is because I understand them better; and I prefer my crucibles, my nerves and bones, to the subtleties, the falsehoods, of your pretended casuists. Boxol could tell you that very well; but after all I have been obliged to laugh at the sententious manner, grave and peremptory, in whichthis archbishop, prelate, primate, orthodox according to the new order, commands the king to quit his wicked life and hasten to separate from his brother’s wife, under pain of incurring ecclesiastical censure and being excommunicated. What think you of that? And while they distribute copies of this lofty admonition among the good tradesmen of London, who can neither read nor write, nor see much farther than the end of their noses and the bottom of their money-bags, they have entered proceedings at Dunstable against that poor Queen Catherine, who is cast out on the world and knows not where to go. Can anything more ridiculous or more pitiable be found? Ha! ha! do you not agree with me?”“Verily,” said Boxol, who became crimson with anger, “Clement, I detest hearing such things laughed at.”“Ah! my poor friend,” replied Clement, “would you have me weep, then? Your men are such droll creatures! When one studies them deeply, he is obliged to ridicule them; otherwise we should die with weeping.”“He is right,” said John Story. “We see how they dispute and flay each other daily for a piece of meadow, a rut in the road which I could hold in the hollow of my hand. They write volumes on the subject; they sweat blood and water; they compel five hundred arrests; then afterwards they are astonished to find they have spent four times as much money as the thing they might have gained was worth. Why cannot men live at peace? If you put them off without wishing to press the suit, they become furious; and yet they always begin by representing theiraffairs to you in so equitable a light that the devil himself would be deceived. There is one thing I have observed, and that is, there is nothing which has the appearance of being in such good faith as a litigant whose case is bad, and who knows his cause to be unjust.”“Come, my friends,” cried Clement, “you speak well; all that excites compassion. You often ridicule me and what you please to call my simplicity, and yet I see everything just as clearly as anybody else; but I have a plain way of dealing, and I do not seek so much cunning. If God calls me, I answer at once: Lord, here I am! I have spent the nights of my youth in studying, in learning, in comparing; I have examined and gone to the depths of all the philosophers of antiquity, apparently so lucid, so luminous; I have found only pride, weakness, darkness, and barrenness. I have recognized that it was all profitless and led to no good; it was alwaysthe manthat I was finding; and of that I had enough in myself to guide and support. Then I took the Bible, and I felt that it was God who spoke to me from its inspired pages; whereat I abandoned my learning and all those philosophical wranglings which weary the mind without bettering the heart. I go straight to my object without vexing myself with anything. There are things which I do not understand. That is natural, since it has pleased God to conceal them from me. Evidently I do not need to comprehend them, since he has not revealed them; and there is no reason, because I find some obscurities, why I should abandon the light which burns in their midst. ‘Master Clement,’ they ask me, ‘how did God make that?’ ‘Why that?’ My dear friends, this is justas far as we know. ‘And this, again?’ This I know nothing about, because it cannot be explained. When our dear friend More read us hisUtopia, I remember that I approached him and said: ‘Why have you not founded a people every man of whom followed explicitly the laws of the church? That would have given you a great deal less trouble, and you would at once have arrived at the art of making them happy, without employing other precepts than these: to avoid all wrong-doing, to love their neighbor as themselves, and to employ their time and their lives in acquiring all sorts of merits by all sorts of good works. There you would find neither thieves nor slanderers, calumniators nor adulterers, gamblers nor drunkards, misers nor usurers, spendthrifts nor liars; consequently, you would have no need of laws, prisons, or punishments, and such a community would unite all the good and exclude the bad.’ He smiled and said to me: ‘Master Clement, you are in the right course, and you would walk therein with all uprightness, but others would turn entirely around and never even approach it.’ Therefore, when I see a man who has no religion, I say: ‘That man is capable of the utmost possible wickedness’; and I am by no means astonished, when the occasion presents, that he should prove guilty. I mentally exclaim: ‘My dear friend, you gain your living by selfish and wicked means’; and I pass by him, saying, ‘Good-day, my friend,’ as to all the others. He is just what he is; and what will you? We can neither control him nor change his nature.”His companions smiled at this discourse of John Clement, whom they loved ardently, and who was a man as good as he was original. Alittle brusque, he loved the poor above all things, and was never happier than when, seated by their humble bedsides, he conversed with them about their difficulties and endeavored to relieve them. Then it seemed to him that he was king of the earth, and that God had placed in his hands a treasure of life and health for him to distribute among them. As often as he added largely to his purse, just so often was it drained of its contents; but he had for his motto that the Lord fed the little birds of the field, and therefore he would not forget him; and, besides, nobody would let John Clement die of hunger. Always cheerful, always contented with everything, he had gone entirely round the circle of science, and, as he said, having learned all that a man could learn, was reduced to the simplicity of a child, but of an enlightened child, who feels all that he loses in being able to go only so far.“But take your breakfast now, instead of laughing at and listening to me,” he cried.As he spoke the sound of music was suddenly heard in the distance, and a redoubled tumult in the streets. A dull murmur, and then a loud clamor, reached their ears. They immediately hurried to the window, and left John Clement at the table, who also arose, however, and went to the window, where he arrived the last.“It is she! It is Queen Anne!” was heard from all sides; and heads arose one above the other, while the roofs even of the houses were covered with people.There is a kind of electricity which escapes from the crowd and the eager rush and excitement—something that makes the heart throb, and that pleases us, we knownot why. There were some who wept, some who shouted; and the sight of the streamers floating from the boats, which advanced in good order like a flotilla upon the river, was sufficient to cause this emotion and justify this enthusiasm; for the people love what is gay, what is brilliant; they admire, they are satisfied. In such moments they forget themselves; the poet sings without coat or shoes; his praises are addressed to the glowing red velvet, the nodding white plume, the gold lace glittering in the sunlight. A king, a queen—synonyms to him of beauty, of magnificence—he waits on them, hopes in them, applauds them when they pass, because he loves to see and admire them.Six-and-twenty boats, painted and gilded, ornamented with garlands of flowers and streaming banners, with devices and figures entwined, filled with richly-dressed ladies, surrounded the bark which conveyed the new spouse. Anne, arrayed in a robe of white satin heavily embroidered with golden flowers, was seated on a kind of throne which had been erected in the centre of the boat. A rich pavilion was raised above her head, and her long veil of magnificent point lace was thrown back, permitting a view of her beautiful features and fair hair. She was glowing with youth and satisfaction; and her heart thrilled with delight at seeing herself treated as a queen, and making her entry in so triumphant a manner into the city of London.Her cheeks were red and delicate as the flower of spring; her eyes sparkled with life and animation. The old Duchess of Norfolk, her grandmother, was seated beside her, and at her feet the Duke ofNorfolk, the Earl of Wiltshire, her brother, Viscount Rochford, hersister-in-law, and other relatives. The king was in another boat, and followed close. In all the surrounding boats there were musicians. The weather was superb, and favored by its calmness and serenity thefêtethat had been prepared for the new queen. Soon shouts arose of “Long live the king!” “Long live the queen!” and the populace, trained and paid by Cromwell, rushed upon the quays, upsetting everything that came in its way, in order to bring its shouts nearer. They seemed like demons seized with an excess of fury; but the eye confounded them among the curious crowd, and the distance harmonized to the royal eyes their savage expression.Meanwhile, the boats, having made divers evolutions, drew up before the Tower, and Anne Boleyn was received at the landing by the lord-mayor and the sheriffs of the city, who came to congratulate and escort her to her apartments. It would be difficult to describe the ostentation displayed by HenryVIII.on this occasion; he doubtless thought in this way to exalt, in the estimation of the people, the birth of his new wife, and impose on them by her dignity. The apartments in the Tower destined to receive them had been entirely refurnished; the grand stairway was covered from top to bottom with Flanders tapestry, and loaded with flowers and censers smoking with perfume, which embalmed the air with a thousand precious odors. A violet-colored carpet, embroidered with gold and furs, extended along their line of march and traversed the courtyards. Anne and all hercortègefollowed the route so sumptuously marked out. As she restedher delicate feet on the silken carpet she was transported with joy, and gazed with delighted eyes on the splendors surrounding her. “I am queen—Queen of England!” she said to herself every moment. That thought alone found a place in her heart; she saw nothing but the throne, the title, this magnificence; she was in a whirl of enjoyment and reckless delight.*   *   *   *   *In the meantime Margaret and Sir Thomas were also entering the Tower. The young girl shuddered at the aspect of the black walls and the long and gloomy corridors through which she had been made to follow. Her heart throbbed violently as she gazed at the little iron-grated windows, closely barred, rising in tiers one above the other. It seemed to her she could see at each one of those little squares, so like the openings of a cage, a condemned head sighing at the sight of heaven or the thought of liberty. She walked behind Sir Thomas, and her heart was paralyzed by terror and fear as she fixed her eyes on that cherished father.They at length reached a large, vaulted hall, damp and gloomy, the white-washed walls of which were covered with names and various kinds of drawings; a large wooden table and some worm-eaten stools constituted the only furniture. A leaden inkstand, some rolls of parchment, an old register lying open, and a man who was writing, interrogated Sir Thomas.“Age?” asked the man; and he fixed his luminous, cat-like eyes on Thomas More.“Fifty years,” responded Sir Thomas.“Your profession?”“I have none at present,” he answered.“In that case I shall write you down as the former lord chancellor.”“As you please,” said More. “But, sir,” continued Sir Thomas, “I have received an order to present myself before the council, and I should not be imprisoned before being heard.”“Pardon me, sir,” replied the clerk quietly, “the order has been received this morning; and if you had not come to-day, you would have been arrested this evening.”As he coolly said these words he passed to him a roll of paper from which hung suspended the seal of state. Sir Thomas opened it, and casting his eyes over the pages, the long and useless formula of which he knew by heart, he came at once to the signature of Cromwell below that of Audley. He recalled this man, who had coolly dined at his table yesterday, surrounded by his children. He then took up the great seal of green wax which hung suspended by a piece of amaranth silk. The wax represented the portrait of HenryVIII., with a device or inscription. He held the seal in his hand, looked at it, and turned it over two or three times.“This is indeed the royal seal,” said he. “I have been familiar with it for a long time; and now the king has not hesitated to attach it to my name. Well, God’s will be done!” And he laid the seal and the roll of paper on the table.“You see it,” said the clerk, observing from the corner of his eye that he had replaced the paper. “Oh! I am perfectly at home with everything since I came here. It was I who registered Empson and Dudley, the ministers of HenryVII., and the Duke of Buckingham. A famous trial that! High treason also—decapitated at TowerHill. A noble lord, moreover; he—listen, I am going to tell you; for it is all written here.” And he began to turn the leaves of the book. “Here, the 17th of May, 1521, page 86.” And placing the end of his finger on the page indicated, he looked at Sir Thomas complacently, as if to say: “Admire my accuracy, now, and my presence of mind.”On hearing this Margaret arose involuntarily to her feet. “Silence, miserable wretch!” she cried. “What is it to us that you have kept an account of all the assassinations which have been committed in this place? No! no! my father shall not stay here; he shall not stay here. He is innocent—yes, innocent; it would be impossible for him to be guilty!”The clerk inspected her closely, as if to determine who she could be. “That is the custom; they always say that, damsel. As for me, however, it concerns me not. They are tried up above; but I—I write here; that is all. Why do they allow themselves to be taken? People ought not to be called wretches so readily,” he added, fixing his eyes upon her. “I am honest, you see, and the worthy father of a family, you understand. I have two children, and I support them by the fruit of my labor.”“Margaret,” said Sir Thomas, “my dearest daughter, you must not remain here!”“You believe—you think so! Well, perhaps not; and yet I implore you! Undoubtedly I am only a woman; I can do nothing at all; I am only Margaret!”And a gleam shot from her eyes.Sir Thomas regarded her, overwhelmed with anguish and despair. He took her by the arm and led her far away from the clerk, toward thelarge and only window, looking out on the gloomy and narrow back yard. “Come,” he said, “let me see you display more courage; do not add to the anguish that already fills my soul! Margaret, look up to heaven.” And he raised his right hand toward the firmament, of which they could see but the smallest space. “Have these men, my daughter, the power to deprive us of our abode up there? Whatever afflictions may befall us here on earth, one day we shall be reunited there in eternity. Then, Margaret, we shall have no more chains, no more prisons, no more separations. Why, then, should you grieve, since you are immortal? What signify the years that roll by and are cast behind us, more than a cloud of dust by which we are for a moment enveloped? If my life was to be extinguished, if you were to cease to exist, then, yes, my despair would be unlimited; but we live, and we shall live for ever! We shall meet again, whatever may be the fate that attends me, whatever may be the road I am forced to follow. Death—ah! well, what is death? A change of life. Listen to me, Margaret: the present is nothing; the future is everything! Yes, I prefer the gloom of the prison to the brilliancy of the throne; all the miseries of this place to the delights of the universe, if they must be purchased at the cost of my soul’s salvation. Cease, then, to weep for me. If I am imprisoned here, it is only what He who called me out of nothing has permitted; and were I at liberty to leave, I would not do so unless it were his will. Know, then, my daughter, that I am calm and perfectly resigned to be here, since God so wills it. Return home now; see that nothing goes wrong there. I appoint you in my place,without, at the same time, elevating you above your mother; and rest assured that your father will endure everything with joy and submission, not because of the justice of men, but because of that of God!”Margaret listened to her father without replying. She knew well that she would not be permitted to remain in the prison, and yet she so much wished it.“No,” she exclaimed at last, “I do not wish to be thus resigned! It is very easy for you to talk, it is nothing for me to listen; but as for me, I am on the verge of life. Without you, for me life has no longer the least attraction! Let them take mine when they take yours! It is the same thing; they owe it to the king. He so thirsts for blood that it will not do to rob him of one drop. Have you not betrayed him? Well! I am a traitor also; let him avenge himself, then; let him take his revenge; let him pick my bones, since he tears my heart. I am you; let him devour me also. Write my name on your register,” she continued, suddenly turning toward the clerk, as if convinced that the reasons she had given could not be answered. “Come, friend, good-fortune to you—two prisoners instead of one! Come, write; you write so well! Margaret More, aged eighteen years, guilty of high treason!”The clerk made no reply.“Is there anything lacking?” said Margaret.“But, damsel,” he replied, placing his pen behind his ear with an air of indecision, “I cannot do that; you have not been accused. If you are an accomplice and have some revelations to make, you must so declare before the court.”“You are right; yes, I am anaccomplice!” she cried. “Therefore come; let nothing stop you.”“My beloved child,” said Sir Thomas painfully, “you would have me, then, condemn myself by acknowledging you as an accomplice in a crime which I have not committed?”“O my father!” cried the young girl, “tell me, have you, then, some hope? No! no! you are deceiving me. You see it! You have heard it! They would have come this night to tear you from our arms, from your desolated home! No; all is over, and I too wish to die!”As she said these words, Cromwell, who had rapidly and noiselessly ascended the stairs, pushed open the door and entered. He came to see if More had arrived. He saluted him without the least embarrassment, and remarked the tears that wet the beautiful face of Margaret. She immediately wiped them away, and looked at him scornfully.“You come to see if the time has arrived!” she said; “if my father has fallen into your hands. Yes, here he is; look at him closely, and dare to accuse him!”“Damsel,” replied Cromwell, bowing awkwardly, “ladies should not meddle with justice, whose sword falls before them.”As he said this, Kingston, the lieutenant of the Tower, entered, followed by an escort of armed guards.The sound of their footsteps, the clanking of their arms, astonished Margaret. Her bosom heaved. She felt that there was no longer any resistance to be offered; she understood that it was this power which threatened to crush and destroy all she loved—she, poor young girl, facing these armed men, coveredwith iron, clashing with steel; these living machines, who understood neither eloquence, reason, truth, sex, age, nor beauty. She regarded them with a look of silent despair.She saw Kingston advance toward her father, and say he arrested him in the name of the king; and then take his hand to express the regret with which he executed this act of obedience to the king. “The coward!” she thought; “he sacrifices his friend.”She saw her father approach her, to clasp her in his arms, to bid her adieu, to tell her to return home, to watch over her sisters, to respect her mother, take care of Henry Pattison, for his sake. She heard all this; she was almost unconscious, for she saw and heard, and yet remained transfixed and motionless. Then he left her. Kingston conducted him, the guards surrounded him, he passed through the door leading into the interior of the Tower; it closed, and Margaret was alone.She stood thus for a long time, as if paralyzed by what had just passed before her. She put her hand upon her forehead; it was burning, and she could recall nothing more. By degrees animation returned, and she felt she was cold. She looked around her; she saw the clerk still seated at his desk, writing. Absolute silence reigned; those great walls were gloomy, deaf, and mute. Then she arose. She saw the day was declining; she thought she would try to go. Roper was waiting, and perhaps uneasy. She cast a lingering look at the door she had seen close upon her father; she set these places in her memory, saying: “I will return.” She then went out, and slowly descended to the bank of the river, where she found Roper, who had charge ofthe boat, and who was astonished at her long absence.“Well, Margaret, and your father?” he said, seeing her alone. She drooped her head. “Will he not return?”“No,” she replied, and entered the boat; then she suddenly seized the hands of Roper. “He is there—do you see?—within those black walls, in that gloomy prison. The guards have taken him; they seized and surrounded him; he disappeared, and I am left—left alone! He has sent me away; he told me to go. Kingston! Cromwell! O Roper! I can stand no more; let us go.” And Margaret sank, panting and exhausted, upon the forepart of the boat. Roper listened and looked at her.“What! he will not return?” he repeated; and his eyes questioned Margaret.But the noble and beautiful young girl heard him not; with her eyes fixed on the walls of the Tower, she seemed absorbed in one thought alone.“Farewell, farewell, my father!” she said. “Your ears no more hear me, but your heart responds to my own. Farewell, farewell!” And she made a sign with her hand, as though she had him before her eyes.“Is it true, Margaret, that he will not return?”“No! I tell you he will not. We are now all alone in the world. You may go. You may go quickly now, if you wish.”“Well,” said Roper, “he will be detained to stand his trial; that will end, perhaps, better than you think.” And he seated himself quietly at the oars; because Roper, always disposed to hope for the best in the future, concluded that Margaret, doubtless frightened at the imposing appearance of justice, believedSir Thomas to be in far greater danger than he really was; and, following the thread of his own thoughts, he added aloud: “Men are men, and Margaret is a woman.”“What would you say by that?” she asked with energy. “Do you mean to say that I am your inferior, and that my nature is lower than your own? What do you mean by saying ‘a woman’? Yes, I am inferior, but only in the animal strength which enables you to row at this moment and make me mount the wave that carries me. I am your inferior in cruelty, indifference, and selfishness. Ah! if I were a man like you, and could only retain under your form all the vigor of my soul and the fearlessness with which I feel myself transported, you would see if my father remained alone, abandoned without resistance in the depths of the prison where I saw him led; and if the oppressor should not, in his turn, fear the voice of the oppressed; and if this nation, which you call a nation ofmen, should be allowed to slaughter its own children!”“Margaret,” said Roper, alarmed, “calm yourself.”“I must sleep, I suppose, in order to please you, when I see my father delivered into the hands of his enemies! He is lost, I tell you, and you will not believe it, and I can do nothing for him. Of what good is courage to one who cannot use it? Of what use is strength, if one can only wish for it? To fret one’s self in the night of impossibility; to see, to hear, and have power to do nothing. This is the punishment I must endure for ever! Nothing to lean upon! Everything will fall around me. He is condemned, they will say; there will be only one human creature less! That will be my father!”And Margaret, standing up in the middle of the boat, her hair dishevelled, her eyes fixed, seemed to see the wretchedness she was describing. The wind blew violently, and scattered the curls of her dark hair around her burning face.“Margaret,” cried Roper, running to her and taking her in his arms—“Margaret, are you dreaming? What would your father say if he knew you had thus abandoned yourself to despair?”“He would say,” replied Margaret, “that we must despise the world and place our trust in Heaven; he would recall resignation into my exasperated soul. But shall I see him henceforth? Who will aid me in supporting the burdens of this life, against which, in my misery, I revolt every instant? Oh! if I could only share his chains. Then, near him, I would brave tyrants, tortures, hell, and the devils combined! The strength of my will would shake the earth, when I cannot turn over a single stone!”At this moment the boat, which Roper, in his trouble, had ceased to guide, struck violently against some piers the fishermen had sunk along the river. It was almost capsized, and the water rushed in through a hole made by the stakes.“We are going to sink,” cried Roper, leaving Margaret and rushing toward the oar he had abandoned.“Well! do what you can to prevent it,” replied the young girl coldly, as she seated herself in her former position in the stern of the boat.But the water continued to rush in, and was already as high as their feet. Roper seized his cloak, and made it serve, though not without considerable difficulty, to close thevent through which the water entered. A plank which he found in the bottom of the boat was used to finish his work, and they were able to resume their course; the boat, however, made but slow way, and it was constantly necessary to bail out the water that leaked through the badly-repaired opening. Night came on, and it was already quite late when they succeeded in reaching the Chelsea terrace, at the foot of which they landed.Roper, having attached the boat to the chain used for that purpose, opened the gate, and they entered together. Margaret’s heart throbbed violently; this lonely house, deprived of him who had made the happiness of her life; the gate which they had closed without his having entered it—everything, even to the sound of her own footsteps, pierced her soul with anguish. She passed rapidly through the garden and entered the house, where she found the rest of the family assembled as usual. All appeared sad, Lady More alone excepted; this woman, vulgar and coarse, was not in a condition to comprehend the position in which she found herself; the baseness of her sentiments, the littleness of her soul, rendered her a burden as annoying as she was painful to support. Margaret, in particular, could feel no affection for her. Frank and sincere herself, she abhorred the cunning and artifice her stepmother believed herself bound to employ to make up for her deficiency of intellect; and when, in the midst of a most interesting and elevated conversation, the reasoning of which Margaret caught with so much avidity, she heard her loudly decide a question and pronounce a judgment in the vulgar phrases used among the mostobscure class of people, she was not always able to conceal her impatience. Her father, more cheerful, more master of himself, recalled by a glance or a smile his dear Margaret to a degree of patience and respect he was always ready to observe.On entering, therefore, Margaret’s indignation was excited by hearing her stepmother abusing unmercifully poor Henry Pattison, who had wept incessantly ever since the departure of his master.“Till-Wall! Till-Wall!” she cried. “This fool here will never let us have any more peace! Sir Thomas had better have taken him with him; they could have acted the fool together!”Margaret listened at first to her stepmother, but she could not permit her to continue. “Weep!” she cried—“yes, weep, poor Pattison! for your master is now imprisoned in the Tower, and God knows whether you will ever see him again. Weep, all of you,” she continued, turning to her sisters, “because you do not see your father in the midst of us. Believe in my presentiments; they have never deceived me. Those souls, coarse and devoid of sensibility, over whom life passes and dries like rain upon a rock, will always reject such beliefs; but if, when one is united by affection to a cherished being, the slightest movement of his eyes enables you to read his soul, and you discover the most secret emotion of his heart, we must believe also that nature, on the approach of misfortunes which are to befall us, reveals to us the secrets of the future. That is why I say to you, Weep, all of you; for you will never see him again. I—no, I will not weep, because to me this means death! I shall die!”And crossing the room, she went and threw herself on her knees before the arm-chair usually occupied by her father. “Yesterday at this hour he was here; I have seen him here; I have heard him speak to me!” she cried, and it seemed to her she still heard him; but in place of that cherished voice which sounded always near her that of Lady More alone fell on her ear.“Cecilia,” she said, “go and see if supper is ready; it should have been served an hour ago. I have waited for you,” she added, looking at Margaret, “although you may not have expected it, judging from the time you were absent.”“I thank you,” replied Margaret. “It was not necessary; I could not eat.”“That is something one could not guess,” angrily replied Lady More, rising from her arm-chair and proceeding to the dining-room.They all followed her; but, on seeing her stepmother take Sir Thomas’ place, and begin in a loud voice to say grace (as was customary in those days, when heads of families did not blush to acknowledge themselves Christians), Margaret was unable to restrain her tears, and immediately left the dining-room. Roper cast an anxious look after her, but on account of her stepmother he said nothing.“It appears,” said Lady More, whilst helping the dish which was placed before her, “that we are at the end of our trouble. All my life I’ve been watching Sir Thomas throwing himself into difficulties and dangers: at one time he would sustain a poor little country squire against some powerful family; at another he was taking part against the government; and now, I fear, this last affair will be the worst of all. But what have you heard,Roper? Why has Sir Thomas not returned?”Roper then related to her how he had waited in the boat; how he had seen the new queen pass, followed by the most brilliant assembly; and, finally, what Margaret had told him concerning her father.“You see!” she exclaimed at every pause he made in his narration. “I was right! Say if I was not right?”Meanwhile, her appetite remained, undisturbed; she continued to eat very leisurely while questioning Roper.He was anxious to finish satisfying the curiosity of his stepmother, who detained him for a long time, giving the details of Lady Boleyn’s dress, although, in spite of his complacent good-will, Roper was unable to describe but imperfectly the inventions, the materials, jewelry, and embroideries which composed her attire.“How stupid and senseless these scruples of Sir Thomas are!” she cried on hearing these beautiful things described. “I ask you now if it is not natural for me to wish to be among those elegant ladies, and to be adorned like them? But no; he has done everything to deprive himself of the king’s favor, who has yielded to him to the utmost degree. But I will go and find him; I will speak to him, and demonstrate to him that his first duty is to take care of his family, and not drag us all down with him.” As she said this, she shook her gray head, and assumed a menacing air as she turned towards Roper. But he was gone. He was afraid she would make him recommence his narrative; and, contrary to his usual custom, he was greatly troubled at the condition in which he saw Margaret.He softly ascended to the chamberof the young girl, and paused to listen a moment at the door. The light shone through the windows, and yet he heard not the slightest sound. He then entered, and found Margaret asleep, kneeling on the floor like a person at prayer. She was motionless, but her sleep seemed troubled by painful dreams; and her eyebrows and all the features of her beautiful face were successively contracted. Her head rested on her shoulder, and she appeared to be still gazing at a little portrait of her father, which she had worn from her childhood, and which she had placed on the chair before her.Roper regarded her a moment with a feeling of intense sorrow. He then knelt by her side and took her hand.The movement aroused Margaret. “Where are we now, Roper?” she said, opening her eyes. “Have you finished mending the boat?”But scarcely had she pronounced the words when, looking around her, she perceived her error. “Ah!” she continued, “I had forgotten we had reached home.”“My dear Margaret,” said Roper, “I have felt the most dreadful anxiety since you left your stepmother.”“Oh! my stepmother,” cried Margaret. “How happy she is! How I envy her the selfishness which makes us feel that in possessing ourselves all our wishes are accomplished! She is, at least, always sure of following and carrying herself in every place; they cannot separate her from the sole object of her love, and nothing can tear her from it.”“Is it, then, a happiness to love only one’s self? And can you, dear Margaret, desire any such fate?”“Yes!” replied Margaret. “The stupid creature by whom the future is disregarded, the past forgotten, the present ignored, makes me envious!Why exhaust ourselves in useless efforts? And why does not man, like the chrysalis which sleeps forty days, not await more patiently the moment when he shall be born in eternity—the moment that will open to him the sources of a new existence, where he shall love without fearing to lose the object of his devotion; where, happy in the happiness of the Creator himself, he will praise and bless him every moment with new transports of joy? William, do you know what that power is which transforms our entire being into the one whom we love, in order to make us endure his sufferings a thousand times over? Do you understand well that love which has neither flesh nor bone; which loves only the heart and mind; which mounts without fear into the presence of God himself; which draws from him, from his grandeur, his perfections, from his infinite majesty, all its strength and all its endurance; which, fearing not death, extends beyond the grave, and lives and increases through all eternity? That celestial love—have you ever felt it? that soul within a soul, which considers virtue alone, lives only for her, and which is every moment exalted by its sacrifices and its devotion? that life within another life, which feels that nothing can extinguish it, and considers the world and creatures as nothing? Speak, Roper, do you entirely comprehend it? O my friend! listen attentively to me; when the fruit of experience shall have ripened for you, when your fellow-creatures shall no more speak of you but as ‘the old man,’ when you shall have long looked upon your children’s children, then you will assemble them round you, and tell them that in other times a tyrant namedHenryVIII.devastated their country, and immolated, in his bloody rage, the father of Margaret; you will tell them that you loved Margaret, and that she perished in the flower of her youth; and you will teach them to execrate the memory of that cruel king, to weep over the oppressed, and to defend them.”“Margaret!” cried Roper, “whither have your excited feelings carried you? Who will be able to take you from me? And the children of whom you speak—will they not also be yours?”“No, they will not be mine! Upon the earth there remains for me neither father nor husband, now that all are reduced to slaves. And learn this, if you do not already know it: Slaves should have no hearts! But I—I have one,” she cried, “and I well understand how to keep it out of their hands!”“Margaret,” replied Roper, “you are greatly to blame for expressing yourself in this manner. What! because the king sends for your father to come and take an oath which he believes he has a right to exact, you already accuse him of wishing to encompass his death? Your father is lost, you say. Have you forgotten, then, the numberless assurances of protection and particular regard which the king has not ceased to bestow on him in the most conspicuous manner? Has he not raised him to the highest position in his kingdom? And if your father had not voluntarily renounced it, the office would have been still in his possession.”“Without doubt,” replied Margaret, “if my father had been willing to barter his conscience, they would have bought it. To-day they will weigh it in the balance against his life. He is already doomed.”TO BE CONTINUED.

A HISTORICAL ROMANCE.

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

Thefollowing day, toward noon, Thomas More was seated, as usual after dinner, in the midst of his children. No one could discover in his countenance any trace of anxiety. He conversed with his customary cheerfulness. Margaret was a little pale, and it was evident that she had been weeping. She alone kept silence and held aloof from Sir Thomas. Near the window overlooking the garden, on the side next the river, sat Lady More engaged in knitting, according to her invariable habit, and murmuring between her teeth against the monkey, which had three or four times carried off her ball of yarn and tangled the thread.

Sir Thomas from time to time raised his eyes to the clock; he then began to interrogate his children about the work each had done during the morning. At last he called the little jester, who was pulling the dog’s ears and turning summersaults in one corner of the room, trying to make his master laugh, whom he found less cheerful than usual.

“Come hither,” said Sir Thomas. “Henry Pattison, do you hear me?”

The fool paid no attention to what his master said to him.

“Henry Pattison!” cried Sir Thomas.

“Master, I haven’t any ears.” He turned a summersault and madea hideous grimace, which he thought charming.

“Since you have no ears, you can hear me as well where you are. Understand, then, little fool, that I have given you to the lord-mayor. I have written to him about you this morning, and I have no doubt but that he will send for you to-day or to-morrow.”

Had a pail of boiling water been thrown on the poor child, he could not have jumped up more suddenly. On hearing these words he ran toward Sir Thomas, and, throwing himself at his feet, burst into a torrent of tears.

“What have I done, master?” he cried. “How have I offended you? Why have you not told me? Forgive me, I will never do so any more; but don’t drive me away. I will never, never displease you again! No! no! don’t send me away!”

“My child,” said Sir Thomas, “you are mistaken. I am not at all displeased or vexed with you; on the contrary. You will be very happy with the lord-mayor; he will take good care of you, and that is why I prefer giving you to him.”

“No! no!” cried Henry Pattison, sobbing. “Don’t let me eave you, I implore you! Do anything you please with me, only don’t send me away. Why is it you no longer want me? Dame Margaret,take pity on me, and beg your father to let me stay!”

But Margaret, usually very willing to do what she was requested, turned away her head and paid no attention to this petition.

“Master, keep me!” he cried in despair. “Why do you not want me with you any longer?”

“My child,” said Sir Thomas, “I am very much distressed at it; but I am too poor now to keep you in my house, to furnish you with scarlet coats and all the other things to which you are accustomed, You will be infinitely better off with the lord-mayor.”

“I want nothing with the lord-mayor. I will have no more scarlet coats nor gold lace; and if I am too expensive to feed, I will go eat with the dog in the yard. You don’t send him away; he is very happy. It is true that he guards the house, and that I—I am good for nothing. Well, I will work; yes, I will work. I implore you, only keep me. I will work. I don’t want to leave you, my dear master. Have pity on me!”

Sir Thomas was greatly disturbed. Alas! his heart was already so full, it required so much courage to conceal the state of his soul, he was in such an agony, that he felt if the dwarf said any more he would be forced to betray himself.

Assuredly it was not the thought of being separated from his jester that afflicted him to such a degree, but the attachment of this deformed and miserable child, his tears, his entreaties, his dread of losing him, reminded him but too forcibly of the grief which later must seize on the hearts of his own children; for the composure which they saw him maintain at this moment alone prevented them from indulging in expressionsof affection far more harrowing still.

“Margaret,” he said, “you will take care of him, will you not?” And fearing he had said too much, he arose hurriedly, and went to examine a vase filled with beautiful flowers, which was placed on the table in the centre of the apartment, and thus concealed the tears which arose and filled his eyes. But the dwarf followed, and fell on his knees before him.

“Come, come, do not distress yourself,” said Sir Thomas; “I will take care of you. Be quiet. Go get your dinner; it is your hour now.”

Sir Thomas approached the window. While he stood there William Roper entered, and, going to him, told him that the boat was ready and the tide was up. More was seized with an inexpressible grief. For an instant he lost sight of everything around him; his head swam.

“Whither go you?” asked his wife.

“Dear Alice, I must to London.”

“To London?” she replied sharply. “But we need you here! Why go to London? Is it to displease his majesty further, in place of staying quietly here in your own house, and doing simply whatever they ask of you? Well did I say that you did wrong in giving up your office. That is what has made the king displeased with you. You ought to write to Master Cromwell; he has a very obliging manner, and I am sure that all this could be very easily arranged; but you are ever loath to give up anything.”

“It is indispensably necessary for me to go,” replied Sir Thomas. “I much prefer remaining. Come!” he said.

“Father! father!” exclaimed allthe children, “we will go with you to the boat.”

“Lead me, dear papa,” said the youngest.

Sir Thomas cast a glance toward Margaret, but she had disappeared. He supposed she did not wish to see him start, and he was grieved. However, he felt that it would be one trial less.

“No, my children,” he replied; “I would rather that you come not with me.”

“Why not, dear father?” they cried in accents of surprise and regret.

“The wind is too strong, and the weather is not fair enough,” said Sir Thomas.

“Yes, yes!” they cried, and threw their arms around his neck.

“You cannot go to-day. I do not wish it,” said Sir Thomas in a decided manner.

Words cannot describe the sufferings of this great man; he knew that he would no more behold his home or his children, and that, determined not to take the oath which he regarded as the first step toward apostasy in a Christian, they would not pardon him. He cast a last look upon his family and hurried toward the door.

“You will come back to-morrow, will you not, father?” cried the children in one voice.

He could not reply; but this question re-echoed sadly in the depths of his soul. He hastened on still more rapidly. Roper, who knew no more than the others, was alarmed at the alteration he saw in the features of Sir Thomas, and began to fear that something had happened still more distressing than what he had already heard. However, More had told them so far that it was impossible for him to be found guilty in the affair of theHoly Maid of Kent, but Roper knew not even who she was. The absence of Margaret alone seemed to him inexplicable. Entirely absorbed in these reflections, he followed Sir Thomas, who walked with extraordinary rapidity, and they very soon reached the green gate.

“Come, my son,” said Sir Thomas, “hasten and open the gate; time presses.”

Roper felt in his belt; he found he had not the key.

“I have not the key,” he said. “I must return.”

“O God!” exclaimed Sir Thomas when he found himself alone; and he seated himself on the step of the little stairway, for he felt no longer able to stand on his feet.

“My God!” he cried, “to go without seeing Margaret! Oh! I shall see her again; if not here, at least before I die. Adieu, my cherished home! Adieu, thou loved place of my earthly sojourn! Why dost thou keep within thy walls those whom I love? If they had left thee, then I could abandon thee without regret. I shall see them no more. This is the last time I shall descend these steps, and that this little gate will close upon me. Be still, my soul, be still; I will not listen to you; I will not hear you; you would make me weak. I have no heart; I have no feeling; I do not think. Well, since you will have me speak, tell me rather why this creeping insect, why this straw, has been crushed in the road? Ah! here is Roper.”

He at once arose. They went out and descended to the boat. Then Sir Thomas seated himself in the stern, and spoke not a word. Roper detached the cable, and, giving a push with the bar against the terrace wall, the boat immediatelyput off and entered the current of the stream.

“This is the end,” said Sir Thomas, looking behind him. He changed his seat, and remained with his eyes fixed upon his home until in the distance it disappeared for ever from his view. He continued, however, gazing in that direction even when the house could no longer be seen, and after some time he observed some one running along the bank of the river, which ascended and descended, and from time to time waving a white handkerchief. He was not able to distinguish whether it was a man or a woman, and told Roper to approach a little nearer to the bank. Then his heart throbbed; he thought he caught a glimpse of, he believed he recognized, Margaret, and he immediately arose to his feet.

“Roper! Margaret! there is Margaret! What can be wrong?”

They drew as near the bank as they could, and Margaret (for it was indeed she) leaped with an unparalleled dexterity from the shore into the boat.

“What is it, my dear child?” exclaimed Sir Thomas, with eager anxiety.

“Nothing,” replied Margaret.

“Nothing! Then why have you come?”

“Because I wanted to come! I also am going to London.” And looking round for a place, she seated herself with a determined air. “Push off now, William,” she said authoritatively.

“My daughter!” exclaimed Sir Thomas.

She made no reply, and More saw that she had a small package under her left arm. He understood very well Margaret’s design, but had not the courage to speak of it to her.

“Margaret, I would rather youhad remained quietly at Chelsea,” he said.

She made no reply.

“Your mother and sisters need you!”

“Nobody in this world has need of me,” replied the young girl coldly, “and Margaret has no longer any use for anybody.”

“Margaret, you pain me sorely.”

“I feel no pain myself! Row not so rapidly,” she said to Roper; “I am in no hurry; it is early. Frail bark, couldst thou only go to the end of the earth, how gladly would I steer thee thither!” And she stamped her foot on the bottom of the boat with passionate earnestness.

Sir Thomas wished to speak, but his strength failed him. His eyes filled with tears, and, fearing to let them flow, he bowed his head on his hands. It was the first time in her life that Margaret had disobeyed him, and now it was for his own sake. Besides, he knew her thoroughly, and he felt sure that nothing could change the resolution she had taken not to leave him at that moment.

They all three sat in silence. The father dared not speak; Roper was engaged in rowing the boat; and Margaret had enough in her own heart to occupy her. She became pale and red alternately, and turned from time to time to see if they were approaching the city. As soon as she perceived the spires of the churches she arose.

“We are approaching the lions’ den,” she cried; “let us see if they will tear Daniel.”

And again she took her seat.

They were soon within the limits of the city, and found, to their astonishment, the greatest noise and excitement prevailing. Crowds ofthe lowest portion of the populace thronged the bridges, were running along the wharves, and gesticulating in the most violent manner. This vile mob, composed of malefactors and idlers, with abuse in their mouths and hatred in their hearts, surges up occasionally from the lowest ranks of society, of which they are the disgrace and the enemy, to proclaim disorder and destruction; just as a violent storm disturbs the depths of a foul marsh, whose poisonous exhalations infect and strike with death every living being who imprudently approaches it. At such times it takes the names of “the people” and “the nation,” because it has a right to neither, and only uses them as a cloak for its hideous deformity and a covering for its rags, its filthy habiliments. They buy up its shouts, its enthusiasm, its incendiaries, terrors, and assassinations; then, when its day is ended, when it is wearied, drunk, and covered with crimes, it returns to seethe in its iniquitous depths and wallow in contempt and oblivion.

Cromwell was well aware of this. Delighted, he moved about among the rabble, and smiled an infamous smile as he heard the cries that burst on the air and pierced the ear: “Long live Queen Anne! Death to the traitors who would dare oppose her!”

“And yet men say,” he repeated to himself, “that it is difficult to do what you will. See! it is Cromwell who has done all this. Not long since the streets resounded with the name of Queen Catherine; to-day it is that of Anne they proclaim. What was good yesterday is bad to-day; is there any difference? What are the masses? An agglomeration of stupid and ignorant creatures who can be made tohowl for a few pieces of silver, who take falsehood for wine and truth for water. And it is Cromwell who has done all this. Cromwell has reconciled the people and the king; he has made his reckoning with virtue, and seen that nothing would remain for him. He has then taken one of the scales of the balance; he has placed therein the heart of a man branded and dishonored by an impure passion, which has sufficed to carry him out of himself; the beam has inclined toward him. He has added crimes; he has added blood, remorse, treason; he will heap it up until it runs over, rather than suffer him to recover himself in the least. Shout, rabble! Ay, shout! for ye shout for me.” And he looked at those red faces, blazing, perspiring; those features, disfigured by vice and debauchery; those mouths, gaping open to their ears, and which yet seemed not large enough to give vent to their thousand discordant and piercing sounds.

“There is something, then, viler than Cromwell,” he went on with a fiendish glee; “there is something more degraded and baser than he. Come, you must confess it, ye moralists, that crime, in white shirts and embroidered laces, is less hideous than that which walks abroad all naked, and with its deformities exposed to the bold light of day.”

He looked toward the river, but the light bark which carried Sir Thomas and his party escaped his keen vision: carried along by the force of the current, she shot swiftly as an arrow under the low arches of the first bridge.

“Alas!” said Sir Thomas, “what is going on here?”

He looked at Margaret and regretted she was there; but she seemed entirely unmoved. Margarethad but one thought, and that admitted of no other.

On approaching the Tower they were still more surprised to see an immense crowd assembled and thronging every avenue of approach. The bridges and decks of the vessels were covered with people, and there seemed to be a general commotion and excitement.

“Thither she comes,” said some women who were dragging their children after them at the risk of having them crushed by the crowd.

“I saw her yesterday,” said another. “She is lovely; the fairest plumes on her head.”

“And how her diamonds glittered! You should have seen them.”

“Be still there, gabblers!” said a fat man mounted on a cask, leaning against a wall. “You keep me from hearing what they are shouting down yonder.”

“My troth! she is more magnificent than the other.”

“They say we are to have fountains of wine at the coronation, and a grand show at Westminster Hall.”

“All is not gold that glitters,” said the fat man, who appeared to have as much good sense as flesh.

He made a sign to a man dressed like himself, who advanced with difficulty through the crowd, pushing his way by dint of effort and perseverance. He seemed to be swimming on a wave of heads, each oscillation of which threw him back in spite of the determined resistance he made. The other, perceiving this, extended his hand to him, and, supporting himself by a bar of iron he found near, he drew his companion up beside him.

“Eh! good-day to you, Master Cooping. A famous day, is it not? All this scum goes to drink about five hundred gallons of beer for the monks.”

“May they go to the devil!” replied the brewer, “and may they die of thirst! Hark how they yell! Do you know what they are saying? Just now I heard one of them crying: ‘Long live the new chancellor.’ They know no more about the names than the things. This Audley is one of the most adroit knaves the world has ever seen. There is in him, I warrant, enough matter to make a big scoundrel, a good big vender of justice. I have known him as an advocate; and as for the judge, I remember him still.” As he said this he struck the leathern purse he carried in the folds of his belt.

“These lawyers are all scoundrels; they watch like thieves in a market for a chance to fleece the poor tradesmen.”

Above these men, who complained so harshly of the lawyers and of those who meted out justice to all comers, there was a window, very high and narrow, placed in a turret that formed the angle of a building of good appearance and solid construction. This window was open, the curtains were drawn back, and there could be seen coming and going the heads of several men, who appeared and disappeared from time to time, and who, after having looked out and surveyed the river and the streets adjacent, returned to the extremity of the apartment.

This house belonged to a rich merchant of Lucca named Ludovico Bonvisi; he was a man of sterling integrity, and in very high repute among the rich merchants of the city. Established in England for a great number of years, he had been intimate with Sir Thomas More at the time the latter was Sheriff of London, and he had ever since retained for him a particularfriendship and esteem. On this day Ludovico had invited four or five of his friends to his house; he was seated in the midst of them, in a large chair covered with green velvet, before a table loaded with rare and costly wines, which were served in decanters of rock crystal banded with hoops of silver. There were goblets of the same costly metal, richly carved, and a number of these were ornamented with precious stones and different kinds of enamel. Superb fruits arranged in pyramids on rare porcelain china, confectioneries, sweetmeats of all kinds and in all sorts of figures, composed the collation he offered his guests, among whom were John Story, Doctor of Laws; John Clement, a physician of great celebrity, and most thoroughly versed in the Greek language and the ancient sciences; William Rastal, the famous jurist; his friend John Boxol, a man of singular erudition; and Nicholas Harpesfield, who died in prison for the Catholic faith during the reign of Elizabeth. They were all seated around the table, but appeared to be much more interested in their conversation than in the choice viands which had been prepared for them by their host. John Story, particularly, exclaimed with extraordinary bitterness against all that was being done in the kingdom.

“No!” said he, “nothing could be more servile or more vile than the course Parliament has pursued in all this affair. We can scarcely believe that these men, not one of whom in his heart approves of the divorce and the silly and impious pretensions of the king, have never dared to utter a single word in favor of justice and equity! No, each one has watched his neighbor to see whathewould do; and whenthere has been question for debate, they have found no other arguments than simply to pass all that was asked of them. The only thing they have dared to suggest has been to insert in this shameful bill that those who should speak against the new queen and against the supremacy of the king would be punished only so far as they had done somaliciously. Beautiful and grand restriction! They think to have gained a great deal by inserting that, so closely are they pursued by their fears.

“When they have instituted proceedings against those unfortunates who shall have offended them, do you believe that Master Audley, and Cromwell, and all the knaves of that class will be at great pains to have entered a well-proven maliciousness? No; it is a halter that will fit all necks—their own as well as those of all others. I have often told them this, but they will believe nothing. Later they will repent it; we shall then be in the net, and there will be no way to get out of it. Yes, I say, and I see it with despair, there is no more courage in the English nation, and very soon we shall let ourselves be seized one by one, like unfledged birds trembling on the edge of their devastated nest.”

“It is very certain,” replied William Rastal, “that I predict nothing good from all these innovations; there is nothing more immoral and more dangerous to society than to let it become permeated, under any form whatever, with the idea of divorce—at least, unless we wish it to become transformed into a vast hospital of orphans abandoned to the chance of public commiseration, into a camp of furious ravishers, excited to revenge and mutual destruction. Take away the indissolubilityof marriage, and you destroy at the same blow the only chances of happiness and peace in the interior and domestic life of man, in order to replace them by suspicions, jealousies, crimes, revenge, and corruption.”

“Or rather,” said John Clement, “it will be necessary to reduce women to a condition of slavery, as in the ancient republics, and place them in the ranks of domestic animals.”

“And, as a natural consequence, be ourselves degraded with them,” cried John Story, “since we are their brothers and their sons.”

“With this base cowardice in Parliament, all is possible,” interrupted Harpesfield, “and I do not see how we are to arrest it. When they no longer regard an oath as an inviolable and sacred thing, what guarantee is left among men? You know, I suppose, what the Archbishop of Canterbury has done with the king’s approval, in Westminster even, at the moment of being consecrated?”

“No!” they all answered.

“He took four witnesses aside before entering the sanctuary, and declared to them—he, Cranmer—that the antiquity of the usage and custom of his predecessors requiring that he should take the oath of fidelity to the pope on receiving the pallium from him, he intended, notwithstanding, to pledge himself to nothing in opposition to the reforms the king might desire to make in the church, of which he recognized him as the sole head. What think you of the invention of this preservative of the obligations that bear the sanctity and solemnity of an oath made at the foot of the altar, in presence of all the people, accustomed to listen to and see it faithfully observed? That proceedingsufficiently describes the age in which we live, our king, and this man.”

“But everybody knows very well that Cranmer is an intriguer, void of faith or law,” replied Rastal, “who has been foisted into his present position in order to do the will of the king and accommodate himself to his slightest desires.”

“He has given him a wife,” said John Clement, pouring out a glass of Cyprus wine, whose transparent color testified to its excellent quality; “I verily believe she will not be the last.”

“What kind of a face has she, this damsel Boleyn? Is she dark or fair? Fair, without doubt; for the other was dark. This is perfect nectar, Ludovico! Have you more of it?”

“You are right; she has lovely blue eyes. She sings and dances charmingly.”

“How much more, Ludovico? A small barrel—hem!—of the last invoice?Excellentissimo, Signor Ludovico!”

“Well, we will see her pass very soon; they escort her to the Tower, where she will remain until the coronation. They say the king has had the apartments in the Tower furnished with an unparalleled magnificence.”

“Yes; and to sustain that magnificence he is contracting debts every day, and all his revenues do not cover his expenses.”

“A good king is a good thing,” said Harpesfield; “but nothing is worse than a bad one, and the good ones are so rare!”

“That is because,” replied Boxol, who was very deliberate, “the power, renown, and flattery surrounding the throne tend so much to corrupt and encourage the passions of a man that it is very difficultfor him, when seated there, to maintain himself without committing any faults. Besides, my masters, we must remember that the faults of private individuals, often quite as shameful, remain unknown, while those of a king are exposed to all eyes and counted on all fingers.”

“Well,” said John Clement; “but this one is certainly somewhat weighty, and I would not care to be burdened by having his sins charged to my account, to be held in reserve against the day of the last judgment.”

“Good Bonvisi, give me a little of that dish which has nothing in common with thebrouet spartiate.”

“A good counsellor and a true friend,” said John Story—“that is what is always wanting to princes.”

“When they have them, they don’t know how to keep them,” said Ludovico. “See what has happened to More! Was not this a brilliant light which the king has concealed under a bushel?”

“Assuredly,” replied Boxol; “he is an admirable man, competent for, and useful in, any position.”

“He is a true Christian,” said Harpesfield; “amiable, moderate, wise, benevolent, disinterested. At the height of prosperity, as in a humble position, you find him always the same, considering only his duty and the welfare of others. He seems to regard himself as the born servant and the friend of justice.”

“Hold, sirs!” replied Clement, turning around on his chair. “There is one fact which cannot be denied; which is, that nothing but religion can render a man ductile. Otherwise he is like to iron mixed with brimstone. We rely upon him, we confide in his face and in the strength of his goodness; but suddenlyhe falls and breaks in your hands as soon as you wish to make some use of him.”

“There must be a furious amount of sulphur in his majesty’s heart,” replied Harpesfield, “for he is going to burn, in Yorkshire, four miserable wretches accused of heresy. For what? I know not; for having wished, perhaps, to do as he has done—get rid of a wife of whom he was tired! There is a fifth, who, more adroit, has appealed to him as supreme head of the church; he has been immediately justified, and Master Cromwell set him at liberty. Thus the king burns heretics at the same time that he himself separates from the church. All these actions are horrible, and nothing can be imagined more absurd and at the same time more criminal.”

“As for me,” replied Clement, who had been watering his sugared fruits with particular care for a quarter of an hour, “I have been very much edified by the pastoral letter of my Lord Cranmer to his majesty. Have you seen it, Boxol?”

“No,” replied Boxol, who was not disposed to treat this matter so lightly as Master Clement, as good an eater as he was a scholar, and what they call abon vivant; “these things make me very sick, and I don’t care to speak of them lightly or while dining.”

“For which reason, my friend,” replied Clement, “you are excessively lean—the inevitable consequence of the reaction of anxiety of soul upon its poor servant, the body; for there are many fools who confound all and disown the soul, because they are ashamed of their hearts and can discern only their bodies. As if we could destroy that which God has made, or discover the knots of the lines he has hidden! He has willed that manshould be at the same time spirit and matter, and that these two should be entirely united; and very cunning must he be who will change that union one iota. They will search in vain for the place of the soul; they will no more find where it is than where it is not. Would you believe—but this is a thing I keep secret because of the honor of our science—that I have a pupil who asserts that we have no soul, because, says this beardless doctor, he has never been able to distinguish the moment when the soul escaped from the body of the dying! Do you not wonder at the force of that argument? And would it not be in fact a very beautiful thing to observe, and a singular spectacle to see, our souls suddenly provided with large and handsome wings of feathers, or hair, or some other material, to use in flying around and ascending whither God calls them? Now, dear friends, believe what I tell you: the more we learn, the more we perceive that we know nothing. Our intelligence goes only so far as to enable us to understand effects, to gather them together, to describe them, and in some cases to reproduce them; but as for the causes, that is an order of things into which it is absolutely useless to wish to penetrate.”

“Come, now, here is Clement going into his scientific dissertations, in place of telling us what was in Cranmer’s letter!” cried Ludovico, interrupting him.

“Ah! that is because I understand them better; and I prefer my crucibles, my nerves and bones, to the subtleties, the falsehoods, of your pretended casuists. Boxol could tell you that very well; but after all I have been obliged to laugh at the sententious manner, grave and peremptory, in whichthis archbishop, prelate, primate, orthodox according to the new order, commands the king to quit his wicked life and hasten to separate from his brother’s wife, under pain of incurring ecclesiastical censure and being excommunicated. What think you of that? And while they distribute copies of this lofty admonition among the good tradesmen of London, who can neither read nor write, nor see much farther than the end of their noses and the bottom of their money-bags, they have entered proceedings at Dunstable against that poor Queen Catherine, who is cast out on the world and knows not where to go. Can anything more ridiculous or more pitiable be found? Ha! ha! do you not agree with me?”

“Verily,” said Boxol, who became crimson with anger, “Clement, I detest hearing such things laughed at.”

“Ah! my poor friend,” replied Clement, “would you have me weep, then? Your men are such droll creatures! When one studies them deeply, he is obliged to ridicule them; otherwise we should die with weeping.”

“He is right,” said John Story. “We see how they dispute and flay each other daily for a piece of meadow, a rut in the road which I could hold in the hollow of my hand. They write volumes on the subject; they sweat blood and water; they compel five hundred arrests; then afterwards they are astonished to find they have spent four times as much money as the thing they might have gained was worth. Why cannot men live at peace? If you put them off without wishing to press the suit, they become furious; and yet they always begin by representing theiraffairs to you in so equitable a light that the devil himself would be deceived. There is one thing I have observed, and that is, there is nothing which has the appearance of being in such good faith as a litigant whose case is bad, and who knows his cause to be unjust.”

“Come, my friends,” cried Clement, “you speak well; all that excites compassion. You often ridicule me and what you please to call my simplicity, and yet I see everything just as clearly as anybody else; but I have a plain way of dealing, and I do not seek so much cunning. If God calls me, I answer at once: Lord, here I am! I have spent the nights of my youth in studying, in learning, in comparing; I have examined and gone to the depths of all the philosophers of antiquity, apparently so lucid, so luminous; I have found only pride, weakness, darkness, and barrenness. I have recognized that it was all profitless and led to no good; it was alwaysthe manthat I was finding; and of that I had enough in myself to guide and support. Then I took the Bible, and I felt that it was God who spoke to me from its inspired pages; whereat I abandoned my learning and all those philosophical wranglings which weary the mind without bettering the heart. I go straight to my object without vexing myself with anything. There are things which I do not understand. That is natural, since it has pleased God to conceal them from me. Evidently I do not need to comprehend them, since he has not revealed them; and there is no reason, because I find some obscurities, why I should abandon the light which burns in their midst. ‘Master Clement,’ they ask me, ‘how did God make that?’ ‘Why that?’ My dear friends, this is justas far as we know. ‘And this, again?’ This I know nothing about, because it cannot be explained. When our dear friend More read us hisUtopia, I remember that I approached him and said: ‘Why have you not founded a people every man of whom followed explicitly the laws of the church? That would have given you a great deal less trouble, and you would at once have arrived at the art of making them happy, without employing other precepts than these: to avoid all wrong-doing, to love their neighbor as themselves, and to employ their time and their lives in acquiring all sorts of merits by all sorts of good works. There you would find neither thieves nor slanderers, calumniators nor adulterers, gamblers nor drunkards, misers nor usurers, spendthrifts nor liars; consequently, you would have no need of laws, prisons, or punishments, and such a community would unite all the good and exclude the bad.’ He smiled and said to me: ‘Master Clement, you are in the right course, and you would walk therein with all uprightness, but others would turn entirely around and never even approach it.’ Therefore, when I see a man who has no religion, I say: ‘That man is capable of the utmost possible wickedness’; and I am by no means astonished, when the occasion presents, that he should prove guilty. I mentally exclaim: ‘My dear friend, you gain your living by selfish and wicked means’; and I pass by him, saying, ‘Good-day, my friend,’ as to all the others. He is just what he is; and what will you? We can neither control him nor change his nature.”

His companions smiled at this discourse of John Clement, whom they loved ardently, and who was a man as good as he was original. Alittle brusque, he loved the poor above all things, and was never happier than when, seated by their humble bedsides, he conversed with them about their difficulties and endeavored to relieve them. Then it seemed to him that he was king of the earth, and that God had placed in his hands a treasure of life and health for him to distribute among them. As often as he added largely to his purse, just so often was it drained of its contents; but he had for his motto that the Lord fed the little birds of the field, and therefore he would not forget him; and, besides, nobody would let John Clement die of hunger. Always cheerful, always contented with everything, he had gone entirely round the circle of science, and, as he said, having learned all that a man could learn, was reduced to the simplicity of a child, but of an enlightened child, who feels all that he loses in being able to go only so far.

“But take your breakfast now, instead of laughing at and listening to me,” he cried.

As he spoke the sound of music was suddenly heard in the distance, and a redoubled tumult in the streets. A dull murmur, and then a loud clamor, reached their ears. They immediately hurried to the window, and left John Clement at the table, who also arose, however, and went to the window, where he arrived the last.

“It is she! It is Queen Anne!” was heard from all sides; and heads arose one above the other, while the roofs even of the houses were covered with people.

There is a kind of electricity which escapes from the crowd and the eager rush and excitement—something that makes the heart throb, and that pleases us, we knownot why. There were some who wept, some who shouted; and the sight of the streamers floating from the boats, which advanced in good order like a flotilla upon the river, was sufficient to cause this emotion and justify this enthusiasm; for the people love what is gay, what is brilliant; they admire, they are satisfied. In such moments they forget themselves; the poet sings without coat or shoes; his praises are addressed to the glowing red velvet, the nodding white plume, the gold lace glittering in the sunlight. A king, a queen—synonyms to him of beauty, of magnificence—he waits on them, hopes in them, applauds them when they pass, because he loves to see and admire them.

Six-and-twenty boats, painted and gilded, ornamented with garlands of flowers and streaming banners, with devices and figures entwined, filled with richly-dressed ladies, surrounded the bark which conveyed the new spouse. Anne, arrayed in a robe of white satin heavily embroidered with golden flowers, was seated on a kind of throne which had been erected in the centre of the boat. A rich pavilion was raised above her head, and her long veil of magnificent point lace was thrown back, permitting a view of her beautiful features and fair hair. She was glowing with youth and satisfaction; and her heart thrilled with delight at seeing herself treated as a queen, and making her entry in so triumphant a manner into the city of London.

Her cheeks were red and delicate as the flower of spring; her eyes sparkled with life and animation. The old Duchess of Norfolk, her grandmother, was seated beside her, and at her feet the Duke ofNorfolk, the Earl of Wiltshire, her brother, Viscount Rochford, hersister-in-law, and other relatives. The king was in another boat, and followed close. In all the surrounding boats there were musicians. The weather was superb, and favored by its calmness and serenity thefêtethat had been prepared for the new queen. Soon shouts arose of “Long live the king!” “Long live the queen!” and the populace, trained and paid by Cromwell, rushed upon the quays, upsetting everything that came in its way, in order to bring its shouts nearer. They seemed like demons seized with an excess of fury; but the eye confounded them among the curious crowd, and the distance harmonized to the royal eyes their savage expression.

Meanwhile, the boats, having made divers evolutions, drew up before the Tower, and Anne Boleyn was received at the landing by the lord-mayor and the sheriffs of the city, who came to congratulate and escort her to her apartments. It would be difficult to describe the ostentation displayed by HenryVIII.on this occasion; he doubtless thought in this way to exalt, in the estimation of the people, the birth of his new wife, and impose on them by her dignity. The apartments in the Tower destined to receive them had been entirely refurnished; the grand stairway was covered from top to bottom with Flanders tapestry, and loaded with flowers and censers smoking with perfume, which embalmed the air with a thousand precious odors. A violet-colored carpet, embroidered with gold and furs, extended along their line of march and traversed the courtyards. Anne and all hercortègefollowed the route so sumptuously marked out. As she restedher delicate feet on the silken carpet she was transported with joy, and gazed with delighted eyes on the splendors surrounding her. “I am queen—Queen of England!” she said to herself every moment. That thought alone found a place in her heart; she saw nothing but the throne, the title, this magnificence; she was in a whirl of enjoyment and reckless delight.

*   *   *   *   *

In the meantime Margaret and Sir Thomas were also entering the Tower. The young girl shuddered at the aspect of the black walls and the long and gloomy corridors through which she had been made to follow. Her heart throbbed violently as she gazed at the little iron-grated windows, closely barred, rising in tiers one above the other. It seemed to her she could see at each one of those little squares, so like the openings of a cage, a condemned head sighing at the sight of heaven or the thought of liberty. She walked behind Sir Thomas, and her heart was paralyzed by terror and fear as she fixed her eyes on that cherished father.

They at length reached a large, vaulted hall, damp and gloomy, the white-washed walls of which were covered with names and various kinds of drawings; a large wooden table and some worm-eaten stools constituted the only furniture. A leaden inkstand, some rolls of parchment, an old register lying open, and a man who was writing, interrogated Sir Thomas.

“Age?” asked the man; and he fixed his luminous, cat-like eyes on Thomas More.

“Fifty years,” responded Sir Thomas.

“Your profession?”

“I have none at present,” he answered.

“In that case I shall write you down as the former lord chancellor.”

“As you please,” said More. “But, sir,” continued Sir Thomas, “I have received an order to present myself before the council, and I should not be imprisoned before being heard.”

“Pardon me, sir,” replied the clerk quietly, “the order has been received this morning; and if you had not come to-day, you would have been arrested this evening.”

As he coolly said these words he passed to him a roll of paper from which hung suspended the seal of state. Sir Thomas opened it, and casting his eyes over the pages, the long and useless formula of which he knew by heart, he came at once to the signature of Cromwell below that of Audley. He recalled this man, who had coolly dined at his table yesterday, surrounded by his children. He then took up the great seal of green wax which hung suspended by a piece of amaranth silk. The wax represented the portrait of HenryVIII., with a device or inscription. He held the seal in his hand, looked at it, and turned it over two or three times.

“This is indeed the royal seal,” said he. “I have been familiar with it for a long time; and now the king has not hesitated to attach it to my name. Well, God’s will be done!” And he laid the seal and the roll of paper on the table.

“You see it,” said the clerk, observing from the corner of his eye that he had replaced the paper. “Oh! I am perfectly at home with everything since I came here. It was I who registered Empson and Dudley, the ministers of HenryVII., and the Duke of Buckingham. A famous trial that! High treason also—decapitated at TowerHill. A noble lord, moreover; he—listen, I am going to tell you; for it is all written here.” And he began to turn the leaves of the book. “Here, the 17th of May, 1521, page 86.” And placing the end of his finger on the page indicated, he looked at Sir Thomas complacently, as if to say: “Admire my accuracy, now, and my presence of mind.”

On hearing this Margaret arose involuntarily to her feet. “Silence, miserable wretch!” she cried. “What is it to us that you have kept an account of all the assassinations which have been committed in this place? No! no! my father shall not stay here; he shall not stay here. He is innocent—yes, innocent; it would be impossible for him to be guilty!”

The clerk inspected her closely, as if to determine who she could be. “That is the custom; they always say that, damsel. As for me, however, it concerns me not. They are tried up above; but I—I write here; that is all. Why do they allow themselves to be taken? People ought not to be called wretches so readily,” he added, fixing his eyes upon her. “I am honest, you see, and the worthy father of a family, you understand. I have two children, and I support them by the fruit of my labor.”

“Margaret,” said Sir Thomas, “my dearest daughter, you must not remain here!”

“You believe—you think so! Well, perhaps not; and yet I implore you! Undoubtedly I am only a woman; I can do nothing at all; I am only Margaret!”

And a gleam shot from her eyes.

Sir Thomas regarded her, overwhelmed with anguish and despair. He took her by the arm and led her far away from the clerk, toward thelarge and only window, looking out on the gloomy and narrow back yard. “Come,” he said, “let me see you display more courage; do not add to the anguish that already fills my soul! Margaret, look up to heaven.” And he raised his right hand toward the firmament, of which they could see but the smallest space. “Have these men, my daughter, the power to deprive us of our abode up there? Whatever afflictions may befall us here on earth, one day we shall be reunited there in eternity. Then, Margaret, we shall have no more chains, no more prisons, no more separations. Why, then, should you grieve, since you are immortal? What signify the years that roll by and are cast behind us, more than a cloud of dust by which we are for a moment enveloped? If my life was to be extinguished, if you were to cease to exist, then, yes, my despair would be unlimited; but we live, and we shall live for ever! We shall meet again, whatever may be the fate that attends me, whatever may be the road I am forced to follow. Death—ah! well, what is death? A change of life. Listen to me, Margaret: the present is nothing; the future is everything! Yes, I prefer the gloom of the prison to the brilliancy of the throne; all the miseries of this place to the delights of the universe, if they must be purchased at the cost of my soul’s salvation. Cease, then, to weep for me. If I am imprisoned here, it is only what He who called me out of nothing has permitted; and were I at liberty to leave, I would not do so unless it were his will. Know, then, my daughter, that I am calm and perfectly resigned to be here, since God so wills it. Return home now; see that nothing goes wrong there. I appoint you in my place,without, at the same time, elevating you above your mother; and rest assured that your father will endure everything with joy and submission, not because of the justice of men, but because of that of God!”

Margaret listened to her father without replying. She knew well that she would not be permitted to remain in the prison, and yet she so much wished it.

“No,” she exclaimed at last, “I do not wish to be thus resigned! It is very easy for you to talk, it is nothing for me to listen; but as for me, I am on the verge of life. Without you, for me life has no longer the least attraction! Let them take mine when they take yours! It is the same thing; they owe it to the king. He so thirsts for blood that it will not do to rob him of one drop. Have you not betrayed him? Well! I am a traitor also; let him avenge himself, then; let him take his revenge; let him pick my bones, since he tears my heart. I am you; let him devour me also. Write my name on your register,” she continued, suddenly turning toward the clerk, as if convinced that the reasons she had given could not be answered. “Come, friend, good-fortune to you—two prisoners instead of one! Come, write; you write so well! Margaret More, aged eighteen years, guilty of high treason!”

The clerk made no reply.

“Is there anything lacking?” said Margaret.

“But, damsel,” he replied, placing his pen behind his ear with an air of indecision, “I cannot do that; you have not been accused. If you are an accomplice and have some revelations to make, you must so declare before the court.”

“You are right; yes, I am anaccomplice!” she cried. “Therefore come; let nothing stop you.”

“My beloved child,” said Sir Thomas painfully, “you would have me, then, condemn myself by acknowledging you as an accomplice in a crime which I have not committed?”

“O my father!” cried the young girl, “tell me, have you, then, some hope? No! no! you are deceiving me. You see it! You have heard it! They would have come this night to tear you from our arms, from your desolated home! No; all is over, and I too wish to die!”

As she said these words, Cromwell, who had rapidly and noiselessly ascended the stairs, pushed open the door and entered. He came to see if More had arrived. He saluted him without the least embarrassment, and remarked the tears that wet the beautiful face of Margaret. She immediately wiped them away, and looked at him scornfully.

“You come to see if the time has arrived!” she said; “if my father has fallen into your hands. Yes, here he is; look at him closely, and dare to accuse him!”

“Damsel,” replied Cromwell, bowing awkwardly, “ladies should not meddle with justice, whose sword falls before them.”

As he said this, Kingston, the lieutenant of the Tower, entered, followed by an escort of armed guards.

The sound of their footsteps, the clanking of their arms, astonished Margaret. Her bosom heaved. She felt that there was no longer any resistance to be offered; she understood that it was this power which threatened to crush and destroy all she loved—she, poor young girl, facing these armed men, coveredwith iron, clashing with steel; these living machines, who understood neither eloquence, reason, truth, sex, age, nor beauty. She regarded them with a look of silent despair.

She saw Kingston advance toward her father, and say he arrested him in the name of the king; and then take his hand to express the regret with which he executed this act of obedience to the king. “The coward!” she thought; “he sacrifices his friend.”

She saw her father approach her, to clasp her in his arms, to bid her adieu, to tell her to return home, to watch over her sisters, to respect her mother, take care of Henry Pattison, for his sake. She heard all this; she was almost unconscious, for she saw and heard, and yet remained transfixed and motionless. Then he left her. Kingston conducted him, the guards surrounded him, he passed through the door leading into the interior of the Tower; it closed, and Margaret was alone.

She stood thus for a long time, as if paralyzed by what had just passed before her. She put her hand upon her forehead; it was burning, and she could recall nothing more. By degrees animation returned, and she felt she was cold. She looked around her; she saw the clerk still seated at his desk, writing. Absolute silence reigned; those great walls were gloomy, deaf, and mute. Then she arose. She saw the day was declining; she thought she would try to go. Roper was waiting, and perhaps uneasy. She cast a lingering look at the door she had seen close upon her father; she set these places in her memory, saying: “I will return.” She then went out, and slowly descended to the bank of the river, where she found Roper, who had charge ofthe boat, and who was astonished at her long absence.

“Well, Margaret, and your father?” he said, seeing her alone. She drooped her head. “Will he not return?”

“No,” she replied, and entered the boat; then she suddenly seized the hands of Roper. “He is there—do you see?—within those black walls, in that gloomy prison. The guards have taken him; they seized and surrounded him; he disappeared, and I am left—left alone! He has sent me away; he told me to go. Kingston! Cromwell! O Roper! I can stand no more; let us go.” And Margaret sank, panting and exhausted, upon the forepart of the boat. Roper listened and looked at her.

“What! he will not return?” he repeated; and his eyes questioned Margaret.

But the noble and beautiful young girl heard him not; with her eyes fixed on the walls of the Tower, she seemed absorbed in one thought alone.

“Farewell, farewell, my father!” she said. “Your ears no more hear me, but your heart responds to my own. Farewell, farewell!” And she made a sign with her hand, as though she had him before her eyes.

“Is it true, Margaret, that he will not return?”

“No! I tell you he will not. We are now all alone in the world. You may go. You may go quickly now, if you wish.”

“Well,” said Roper, “he will be detained to stand his trial; that will end, perhaps, better than you think.” And he seated himself quietly at the oars; because Roper, always disposed to hope for the best in the future, concluded that Margaret, doubtless frightened at the imposing appearance of justice, believedSir Thomas to be in far greater danger than he really was; and, following the thread of his own thoughts, he added aloud: “Men are men, and Margaret is a woman.”

“What would you say by that?” she asked with energy. “Do you mean to say that I am your inferior, and that my nature is lower than your own? What do you mean by saying ‘a woman’? Yes, I am inferior, but only in the animal strength which enables you to row at this moment and make me mount the wave that carries me. I am your inferior in cruelty, indifference, and selfishness. Ah! if I were a man like you, and could only retain under your form all the vigor of my soul and the fearlessness with which I feel myself transported, you would see if my father remained alone, abandoned without resistance in the depths of the prison where I saw him led; and if the oppressor should not, in his turn, fear the voice of the oppressed; and if this nation, which you call a nation ofmen, should be allowed to slaughter its own children!”

“Margaret,” said Roper, alarmed, “calm yourself.”

“I must sleep, I suppose, in order to please you, when I see my father delivered into the hands of his enemies! He is lost, I tell you, and you will not believe it, and I can do nothing for him. Of what good is courage to one who cannot use it? Of what use is strength, if one can only wish for it? To fret one’s self in the night of impossibility; to see, to hear, and have power to do nothing. This is the punishment I must endure for ever! Nothing to lean upon! Everything will fall around me. He is condemned, they will say; there will be only one human creature less! That will be my father!”

And Margaret, standing up in the middle of the boat, her hair dishevelled, her eyes fixed, seemed to see the wretchedness she was describing. The wind blew violently, and scattered the curls of her dark hair around her burning face.

“Margaret,” cried Roper, running to her and taking her in his arms—“Margaret, are you dreaming? What would your father say if he knew you had thus abandoned yourself to despair?”

“He would say,” replied Margaret, “that we must despise the world and place our trust in Heaven; he would recall resignation into my exasperated soul. But shall I see him henceforth? Who will aid me in supporting the burdens of this life, against which, in my misery, I revolt every instant? Oh! if I could only share his chains. Then, near him, I would brave tyrants, tortures, hell, and the devils combined! The strength of my will would shake the earth, when I cannot turn over a single stone!”

At this moment the boat, which Roper, in his trouble, had ceased to guide, struck violently against some piers the fishermen had sunk along the river. It was almost capsized, and the water rushed in through a hole made by the stakes.

“We are going to sink,” cried Roper, leaving Margaret and rushing toward the oar he had abandoned.

“Well! do what you can to prevent it,” replied the young girl coldly, as she seated herself in her former position in the stern of the boat.

But the water continued to rush in, and was already as high as their feet. Roper seized his cloak, and made it serve, though not without considerable difficulty, to close thevent through which the water entered. A plank which he found in the bottom of the boat was used to finish his work, and they were able to resume their course; the boat, however, made but slow way, and it was constantly necessary to bail out the water that leaked through the badly-repaired opening. Night came on, and it was already quite late when they succeeded in reaching the Chelsea terrace, at the foot of which they landed.

Roper, having attached the boat to the chain used for that purpose, opened the gate, and they entered together. Margaret’s heart throbbed violently; this lonely house, deprived of him who had made the happiness of her life; the gate which they had closed without his having entered it—everything, even to the sound of her own footsteps, pierced her soul with anguish. She passed rapidly through the garden and entered the house, where she found the rest of the family assembled as usual. All appeared sad, Lady More alone excepted; this woman, vulgar and coarse, was not in a condition to comprehend the position in which she found herself; the baseness of her sentiments, the littleness of her soul, rendered her a burden as annoying as she was painful to support. Margaret, in particular, could feel no affection for her. Frank and sincere herself, she abhorred the cunning and artifice her stepmother believed herself bound to employ to make up for her deficiency of intellect; and when, in the midst of a most interesting and elevated conversation, the reasoning of which Margaret caught with so much avidity, she heard her loudly decide a question and pronounce a judgment in the vulgar phrases used among the mostobscure class of people, she was not always able to conceal her impatience. Her father, more cheerful, more master of himself, recalled by a glance or a smile his dear Margaret to a degree of patience and respect he was always ready to observe.

On entering, therefore, Margaret’s indignation was excited by hearing her stepmother abusing unmercifully poor Henry Pattison, who had wept incessantly ever since the departure of his master.

“Till-Wall! Till-Wall!” she cried. “This fool here will never let us have any more peace! Sir Thomas had better have taken him with him; they could have acted the fool together!”

Margaret listened at first to her stepmother, but she could not permit her to continue. “Weep!” she cried—“yes, weep, poor Pattison! for your master is now imprisoned in the Tower, and God knows whether you will ever see him again. Weep, all of you,” she continued, turning to her sisters, “because you do not see your father in the midst of us. Believe in my presentiments; they have never deceived me. Those souls, coarse and devoid of sensibility, over whom life passes and dries like rain upon a rock, will always reject such beliefs; but if, when one is united by affection to a cherished being, the slightest movement of his eyes enables you to read his soul, and you discover the most secret emotion of his heart, we must believe also that nature, on the approach of misfortunes which are to befall us, reveals to us the secrets of the future. That is why I say to you, Weep, all of you; for you will never see him again. I—no, I will not weep, because to me this means death! I shall die!”

And crossing the room, she went and threw herself on her knees before the arm-chair usually occupied by her father. “Yesterday at this hour he was here; I have seen him here; I have heard him speak to me!” she cried, and it seemed to her she still heard him; but in place of that cherished voice which sounded always near her that of Lady More alone fell on her ear.

“Cecilia,” she said, “go and see if supper is ready; it should have been served an hour ago. I have waited for you,” she added, looking at Margaret, “although you may not have expected it, judging from the time you were absent.”

“I thank you,” replied Margaret. “It was not necessary; I could not eat.”

“That is something one could not guess,” angrily replied Lady More, rising from her arm-chair and proceeding to the dining-room.

They all followed her; but, on seeing her stepmother take Sir Thomas’ place, and begin in a loud voice to say grace (as was customary in those days, when heads of families did not blush to acknowledge themselves Christians), Margaret was unable to restrain her tears, and immediately left the dining-room. Roper cast an anxious look after her, but on account of her stepmother he said nothing.

“It appears,” said Lady More, whilst helping the dish which was placed before her, “that we are at the end of our trouble. All my life I’ve been watching Sir Thomas throwing himself into difficulties and dangers: at one time he would sustain a poor little country squire against some powerful family; at another he was taking part against the government; and now, I fear, this last affair will be the worst of all. But what have you heard,Roper? Why has Sir Thomas not returned?”

Roper then related to her how he had waited in the boat; how he had seen the new queen pass, followed by the most brilliant assembly; and, finally, what Margaret had told him concerning her father.

“You see!” she exclaimed at every pause he made in his narration. “I was right! Say if I was not right?”

Meanwhile, her appetite remained, undisturbed; she continued to eat very leisurely while questioning Roper.

He was anxious to finish satisfying the curiosity of his stepmother, who detained him for a long time, giving the details of Lady Boleyn’s dress, although, in spite of his complacent good-will, Roper was unable to describe but imperfectly the inventions, the materials, jewelry, and embroideries which composed her attire.

“How stupid and senseless these scruples of Sir Thomas are!” she cried on hearing these beautiful things described. “I ask you now if it is not natural for me to wish to be among those elegant ladies, and to be adorned like them? But no; he has done everything to deprive himself of the king’s favor, who has yielded to him to the utmost degree. But I will go and find him; I will speak to him, and demonstrate to him that his first duty is to take care of his family, and not drag us all down with him.” As she said this, she shook her gray head, and assumed a menacing air as she turned towards Roper. But he was gone. He was afraid she would make him recommence his narrative; and, contrary to his usual custom, he was greatly troubled at the condition in which he saw Margaret.

He softly ascended to the chamberof the young girl, and paused to listen a moment at the door. The light shone through the windows, and yet he heard not the slightest sound. He then entered, and found Margaret asleep, kneeling on the floor like a person at prayer. She was motionless, but her sleep seemed troubled by painful dreams; and her eyebrows and all the features of her beautiful face were successively contracted. Her head rested on her shoulder, and she appeared to be still gazing at a little portrait of her father, which she had worn from her childhood, and which she had placed on the chair before her.

Roper regarded her a moment with a feeling of intense sorrow. He then knelt by her side and took her hand.

The movement aroused Margaret. “Where are we now, Roper?” she said, opening her eyes. “Have you finished mending the boat?”

But scarcely had she pronounced the words when, looking around her, she perceived her error. “Ah!” she continued, “I had forgotten we had reached home.”

“My dear Margaret,” said Roper, “I have felt the most dreadful anxiety since you left your stepmother.”

“Oh! my stepmother,” cried Margaret. “How happy she is! How I envy her the selfishness which makes us feel that in possessing ourselves all our wishes are accomplished! She is, at least, always sure of following and carrying herself in every place; they cannot separate her from the sole object of her love, and nothing can tear her from it.”

“Is it, then, a happiness to love only one’s self? And can you, dear Margaret, desire any such fate?”

“Yes!” replied Margaret. “The stupid creature by whom the future is disregarded, the past forgotten, the present ignored, makes me envious!Why exhaust ourselves in useless efforts? And why does not man, like the chrysalis which sleeps forty days, not await more patiently the moment when he shall be born in eternity—the moment that will open to him the sources of a new existence, where he shall love without fearing to lose the object of his devotion; where, happy in the happiness of the Creator himself, he will praise and bless him every moment with new transports of joy? William, do you know what that power is which transforms our entire being into the one whom we love, in order to make us endure his sufferings a thousand times over? Do you understand well that love which has neither flesh nor bone; which loves only the heart and mind; which mounts without fear into the presence of God himself; which draws from him, from his grandeur, his perfections, from his infinite majesty, all its strength and all its endurance; which, fearing not death, extends beyond the grave, and lives and increases through all eternity? That celestial love—have you ever felt it? that soul within a soul, which considers virtue alone, lives only for her, and which is every moment exalted by its sacrifices and its devotion? that life within another life, which feels that nothing can extinguish it, and considers the world and creatures as nothing? Speak, Roper, do you entirely comprehend it? O my friend! listen attentively to me; when the fruit of experience shall have ripened for you, when your fellow-creatures shall no more speak of you but as ‘the old man,’ when you shall have long looked upon your children’s children, then you will assemble them round you, and tell them that in other times a tyrant namedHenryVIII.devastated their country, and immolated, in his bloody rage, the father of Margaret; you will tell them that you loved Margaret, and that she perished in the flower of her youth; and you will teach them to execrate the memory of that cruel king, to weep over the oppressed, and to defend them.”

“Margaret!” cried Roper, “whither have your excited feelings carried you? Who will be able to take you from me? And the children of whom you speak—will they not also be yours?”

“No, they will not be mine! Upon the earth there remains for me neither father nor husband, now that all are reduced to slaves. And learn this, if you do not already know it: Slaves should have no hearts! But I—I have one,” she cried, “and I well understand how to keep it out of their hands!”

“Margaret,” replied Roper, “you are greatly to blame for expressing yourself in this manner. What! because the king sends for your father to come and take an oath which he believes he has a right to exact, you already accuse him of wishing to encompass his death? Your father is lost, you say. Have you forgotten, then, the numberless assurances of protection and particular regard which the king has not ceased to bestow on him in the most conspicuous manner? Has he not raised him to the highest position in his kingdom? And if your father had not voluntarily renounced it, the office would have been still in his possession.”

“Without doubt,” replied Margaret, “if my father had been willing to barter his conscience, they would have bought it. To-day they will weigh it in the balance against his life. He is already doomed.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

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