SIR THOMAS MORE.

SIR THOMAS MORE.A HISTORICAL ROMANCEFROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.XVII.Whenthe great city lay buried in that obscurity which the mantle of night had thrown over all, and while she seemed to sleep, resting on her bed of earth, by the banks of the river that flowed for ever with a measured sound—when she seemed to sleep at last, although neither the scholar, nor the afflicted, nor the criminal whom she enclosed in her bosom could have extinguished in the depths of their being the fire of intelligence which consumed them—there was to be seen a silent and fugitive figure gliding along by the walls of the Tower, upon which a noble and slender form was reflected. The light footfall made no sound, the sighs of her heart were stifled, and the folds of her veil hung motionless. She seated herself on the stone threshold of the awful gate, and for a long time wept in silence.“Naught!” she said. “Not a sound to be heard. These walls are like the hearts of the judges. Children weep,” she said again. “What are tears but weakness and water? Not a gleam! It seems they have here neither fire nor life. What is this that consumes my heart? Weep, women! weep in your silken robes, under your downy coverings! As for me, it is the night wind dries my tears, and the damp earth drinks them up! When wilt thou cease to weep, and when will the heart of Margaret feel revived?… But why be astonished to feel it tremble? Has it not been broken like a preciousvase which can never more be mended?“‘Come, Margaret, white Margaret!’ they used to say when you trod on the grass of the fields, Come, death, or yet a moment of life.”And the young girl, standing on tiptoe, with strong arm and powerful effort, raised the heavy bronze griffin, which fell resounding upon the brass of the doors, and then she started, for at times she was a woman.But there was no response; and when the sound of the iron had ceased to vibrate, and, it seemed to her, had exhausted itself in the air, nothing was heard but the monotonous dashing of the waves which came to die at the foot of the wall; and nothing more disturbed the silence of the night.“Deaf as the pity in their souls!” she said after some moments.And this time she knocked without flinching; for already Margaret had recovered from her fears. But a long and mournful silence continued to reign.Whilst she was trying so ineffectually to reach her father, Sir Thomas re-entered the Tower, exhausted by fatigue. He had been confined in a still more gloomy and narrow cell. A miserable lamp, high placed, dimly lighted the obscurity. He was seated in a corner, and, alone at least, he went over in his mind the agonies he had enduredin that fatal journey. “Where is my daughter now?” he said to himself. “Alas! I saw her but an instant going out from before the judges. She will have seen that axe turned toward me. She will have said to herself there is no more hope; that I was branded with the seal of the condemned; that what she had heard was indeed true. If only she had returned to Chelsea! For they will not permit me to linger: Cromwell’s eyes gleamed with a ferocious light. Yet what have I done to this man to make him hate me so intensely? My God, permit me not to be betrayed into an emotion of hatred against” (Sir Thomas hesitated)—“against my brother,” he continued with courage; “for, after all, he is a man like myself, formed in the same mould, animated by the same intelligence; and it is better to be persecuted than to be the persecutor. Pardon him, then, O my God! Let your mercy be extended toward him, surround him on all sides, and never remember against him the evil he has wrought on me.”While reflecting thus Sir Thomas suddenly heard a slight noise. He paused, and, seized with inexpressible anxiety, listened almost without breathing.“It was in such manner he walked! It is he! It is Rochester!” he cried. “But no, I am mistaken; that cannot be,” he said, casting his eyes around him. “They have changed my cell; alas! I could not hear him even should he be there. It is an error of my troubled imagination.”But the noise increased, and Sir Thomas soon heard them opening the doors which led to his cell. Some one was approaching.“Again!” he said. “They will not, then, allow me a moment ofrepose.” And he saw Sir Thomas Pope coming in, bearing a roll of paper in his right hand.Pope approached More and presented the paper.Sir Thomas calmly took it from his hands, and, looking at Pope, said: “What! Master Pope, the king has already signed the death-warrant?” Glancing over the paper, he saw that his execution was set down for the next morning at nine o’clock.“The king, in his ineffable clemency,” said Pope with an air of constraint, “commutes your punishment to that of decapitation.”“I am much beholden to his majesty,” said Sir Thomas. “Still, good Master Pope, I hope that my children and my friends may never have need of any such favor.”More smiled at first; then he regarded Pope with an expression of indefinable melancholy, and was silent.“It is true—it is too true,” stammered Pope, “that this is not a great favor. But permit me, Sir Thomas, to avow to you that your conduct appears to me so strangely obstinate that I cannot explain it, and that you yourself seem to have had the wish to irritate the king against you to the last degree. Thus, you abandon your family, you leave your home, you lose your head, and all rather than take an oath to which our bishops have readily consented.”“Yes, consented, and not wished to take,” replied Sir Thomas, “partly through fear, partly through surprise. They have taken it, you say; but I fear that they may be already repenting it. Good Master Pope, if you live you will surely see many strange events taking place in our unhappy country. In separating herself, in spite of the law of God,from the Church of Rome, you will see England change her face; intestine wars will rend her; the blood of her children will flow in every direction for centuries, perchance. Who can foretell whither the path of error will lead us when once we have taken the first step? Doubtless we are still Christians; but Christians who, separated from the mother that gave them birth, will soon have lost the revivifying spirit they have received from her. The Catholic faith, I know, cannot perish from the earth; but it can depart from one country into another. If, in three hundred years from now, we were permitted to return, you and I, to this world, we should find the faith, as to-day, pure from all error, one, and resting upon the indivisible truth, yet submitting to that supreme Head, to this key ofSt.Peter, which indeed some mortal men shall have carried a moment in their hands, and which is so violently attacked to-day. But my country, this land that I love—for it holds the ashes of my father—what is it destined to undergo? The incoherence and diversity of human opinions; the violence, the absurdities of the passions which shall have dictated them. Divided into a thousand sects, a thousand clashing opinions, you will not find a single family, perhaps, where they are united in one common faith, in the same hope and the same charity! And this divine Word, the Sacred Scriptures, which we have received from our fathers, abandoned to the ignorance and the pride of a pretended liberty, will have, perhaps, become only the source of horrible crimes and frightful cruelties, in place of being the foundation of all good and of every virtue!”“Verily, Sir Thomas,” said Pope,“you frighten me! How can it hap that the ruin and disasters you have described should be in store for us? No, no, I do not believe it; because it is then you would see us all bound up around the centre of unity which they think to destroy to-day by a word!—expressions of a spiritual power which the prince may not, in fact, exercise.”“He may not, as you say,” replied Sir Thomas; “but he will exercise it nevertheless, and at least I shall not have to reproach myself with having contributed to it. Oh! no,” he continued, “no; and I am happy to shed my blood in testimony of this truth. For listen, Master Pope: I have not sacrificed twenty years of my life in the service of the state without having studied what were her true interests, and consequently those of society, which is at the same time her foundation and support; and I declare to you that I have recognized and am thoroughly convinced that the Catholic religion, the realization of the figurative and prophetic law given to the Jews, the development and complete perfection of the natural law, can alone be the foundation of a prosperous and happy society, because it alone possesses the highest degree of morals possible to attain; it alone bears fruit in the heart; it alone can restrain, and is able even to destroy, that selfishness, natural to man, which leads him to sacrifice everything to his desires and gratifications—a selfishness which, abandoned to itself and carried to its greatest length, renders all social order impossible, and transforms men into a crowd of enraged enemies bent on mutual destruction.“All that tends to disrupt, then, all that would alter or attack, this excellent religion, is a mortal blowaimed at the country and its citizens, and necessarily tends to deprive them of that which ensures their dignity, their safety, their happiness, their hopes, and their future. Look around you at the universe, and behold on its surface the people of those unhappy countries where the light of the Catholic faith has been extinguished or has not yet been kindled. Study their governments, and behold in them the most monstrous despotisms, where blood flows like water, and the life of man is considered of less value than that of the frivolous animal which amuses him. Read the cruel laws their ferocity has dictated; learn the still more crying acts of injustice they commit, and how they pursue, as with a tearing lash, those whose weakness and stupidity have delivered them up as slaves; tremble at the recital of the tortures and barbarities they inflict before death, to which they condemn their victims without appeal as without investigation; behold the arts, spiritual affection, sublime poesy, perish there; ignorance, instability, misery, and terror succeed them, and reign without interruption and without restraint. Ah! these noble ideas of right, of justice, of order and humanity, which govern us, and ensure among us the triumph of the incredulous and proud philosopher, which makes him say and think that they alone are sufficient for society—he perceives not, blind as he is, that these are prizes in the hand of religion, who, extends them to him, and that, if he speaks like her, she speaks still better than he. I do not say—no, I do not say—that we will fall as low as the Turk, the Indian, or the American savage. So long as one glimmer of the Gospel, one souvenir of its maxims, shall remain standing in the midstof us, we will not lose all that we have received since our ancestors came out of the forests where they wandered, subsisting on the flesh of wild animals; but we will begin to recede from the truth, we will cover it with clouds; they will become darker and darker, and soon, if we still go on, it will be no longer with a firm and resolute step, but rather like gloomy travellers wandering in a vast desert without a breath of air or a drop of water.”Pope listened to Sir Thomas without daring to interrupt him, and felt his heart touched by what he said. For this admirable man possessed the faculty of attracting all who saw him immediately toward him; and when they heard him speak, the strength, the justness of his thoughts and his arguments penetrated little by little into their minds, until, almost without perceiving it, they found themselves entirely changed, and astonished to feel that they were of the same opinion as himself.Pope leaned against a stool which was there, and remained very thoughtful; for he had taken the oath himself, without dreaming that it could result in such serious consequences. Neither his convictions, however, nor his courage were such as would make him desire to give his life for the truth; but he could not refrain from admiring this devotion in the illustrious man before him. He looked at him without speaking, and seemed entirely confounded.Mistaking the cause, and seeing him abstracted and silent, Sir Thomas supposed the conversation had wearied Pope; he therefore ceased speaking, and, taking up the death-warrant, he read it a second time. At the end his eyes filled with tears and his sight grew dim.“It is, then, fixed for to-morrow!” he exclaimed—“to-morrow morning. One night only! Oh! how I wish they would permit me to write to Erasmus.[143]Pope,” said he, “shall I not be permitted to see once more, for the last time, my dearly-beloved daughter? I fear that she may be still in the city. I would like her to be sent away—that Roper should take her. Ah! Master Pope, it is not the riches or honors of this world which are difficult to sacrifice, but the affections of the heart, of the soul that lives within us, which is entirely ourselves, without which the rest is nothing.” And he again relapsed into silence.“I do not think you will be able to see her,” said Pope, replying to the question of Sir Thomas; “and—even—” he added with painful hesitation, “I am also charged to ask you not to make any remarks to the people on the scaffold. The king hath expressly so willed, and then he will permit your wife and children to assist at your interment.”“Ah!” replied Sir Thomas, “I thank his majesty for manifesting so much solicitude about my poor interment; but it matters little where these miserable bones be laid when I have abandoned them. God, who has made them out of nothing, will be able to find the ashes and recall them a second time into being when it shall please him to restore them to that indestructible life which he has so graciously vouchsafed to promise them.”“You wish to speak, then?” answered Pope. “Nevertheless, I believeit would be better not to anger the king more.”“No, no!” replied Sir Thomas, “my dear Master Pope, you are mistaken. Since the king desires it, I will not speak. Most certainly I intended doing so; but since he forbids it, I will forbear. If they refuse me permission to see my daughter,” replied Sir Thomas, “I hope, at least, I may be able to see the Bishop of Rochester; since he has taken the oath, they will not fear.”“Taken the oath!” cried Pope. “Why, he has been executed; he died to-day!”“He died to-day!” repeated Sir Thomas. “My friend died to-day! O Cromwell! May God, whose power is infinite, hear my voice, grant my requests: may the same dangers unite us, that, following close in thy footsteps, my last sigh may be breathed with thine!”And More, plunged in the deepest grief, slowly repeated the memorable words, the solemn words, which the holy bishop had pronounced in presence of the Lord and of his friend during the vigil ofSt.Thomas, when they were alone together in his home at Chelsea.“Rochester would not take the oath, then!” continued More in a stifled voice, clasping his hands and elevating them toward heaven.“Alas! no,” replied Pope.“Cromwell told me he had.”“He lied,” answered Pope, and his eyes filled with tears.“He would not swear?”“Never!”“Pope,” said More, “I beg you to let me write to Erasmus. To-morrow I shall be no more! You are the last living man to whom I shall be able to speak.”“Ah! Sir Thomas,” cried Popeuneasily, “if that letter were seized, what would become of me?”“Let me write a few words on this leaf,” replied Sir Thomas, looking at a leaf of white paper belonging to the book which contained his condemnation—“a word on this leaf,” he continued. “Pope, you can cut it off and send it later when there will be no danger for you. Nay, good Pope, grant me this favor,” he added. “I have neither pen nor ink; but I have here a piece of charcoal, which I have already tried to sharpen.”“Ah! Sir Thomas,” replied Pope, “I have not the heart to refuse you; however, I shall have cause, perhaps, to repent it.”“No! no!” cried Sir Thomas. “If you cannot send him this last farewell without being afraid, you can burn it.”“Write, then; I consent,” said Pope; and he handed the death-warrant to Sir Thomas, who had returned it to him.More seized it, and wrote the following words:“Erasmus! O Erasmus! my friend, this is the last time I shall have the happiness of pronouncing your name. An entire life, O my friend! is passed; it has glided by in a moment. Behold one about to end like a day that is closed. I have loved you as long as I have had breath; as long as I have felt my heart throb in my bosom the name of Erasmus has reigned there. Alas! I have so many things to say to you. Though the words die on my lips, your heart alone will be able to comprehend mine. May it enter; may it hear in my soul all that More has wished to say to Erasmus!“When you receive this page, I shall be no more; it is still attached to the writ which contains my sentence of death. Erasmus, I am going to leave Margaret. I abandon my children! Our friend Pierre Gilles is here. I saw him for a moment—the moment when they were pronouncing sentence on me. Without doubt, to-morrow morning, Ishall see him at the foot of the scaffold. I shall be kept at a distance from him; I shall not be able to say a single word to him. My eyes will be directed toward him, my hand will be stretched out; but my heart will not be permitted to speak to him! O Erasmus! how I suffer. And Margaret—O my friend! if you had seen her, how pale she was, what anguish was painted on all her features. I could wish that she loved me less: she would not suffer so much in seeing me die. Erasmus, not one minute! Time is short; the hour approaches. Oh! when I could write those long letters so peaceably, when science alone and the good of humanity occupied us both; when I saw those letters despatched so quietly to go in search of you, and said to myself: ‘In so many days I shall receive his reply!’… No more replies, Erasmus! If ever you come to England, you will ask in what corner they have thrown my ashes. Oh! what would become of me if I were not a Christian? What happiness to feel our faith rising up from the depths of wretchedness, to hear all our groans and lamentions, and to answer them! I die a Christian! I die for this faith so pure and beautiful! for that faith which is the happiness and glory of the human race. At this thought I feel myself reanimated; new strength inspires my heart; hope inundates my soul. I shall see you all again. Yes, one day—one day after a long absence—I shall clasp you once more to my bosom in the presence of God himself. I shall see again my daughter! We will find ourselves invested with our same bodies. ‘I shall see my God,’ said Job; ‘for I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that I shall rise again at the last day; I will go out of this world into that which I am about to enter, and then I shall see my God. It will be I who shall see him, and not another.’“Erasmus, to live for ever, to love for ever! Farewell.“Your brother, your friend,“Thomas More.”The charcoal began to crumble in his hands. He was scarcely able to trace the last words. He pressed his lips on them and returned the book to Pope.Meanwhile, Margaret, tired ofknocking, and losing all hope of reaching her father, was seated upon the stone step before the door of the prison, and, being wrapped in her veil, she remained motionless and mute, like a statue of stone whose head, bowed upon its garments, is the personification of sorrow and silence.Thus she sat absorbed in thought, and the burning tears had bathed her hands and ran down on her knees, when the footstep of a man who was approaching from the quay aroused her from her reverie. Alarmed, she arose abruptly, and, placing her hand upon a long and sharp dagger she had attached to her side, she stood awaiting the intruder; but she recognized Roper.“Margaret,” he exclaimed, “what are you doing there?” And he spoke these few words to her in a melancholy tone of voice more expressive of pain than reproach; because he sought her, knowing well where he would find her.“It is you, Roper,” said the young girl, and she resumed her seat as before. William Roper then came and seated himself by her side; taking her cold and wet hand, he pressed it to his lips with an inexpressible oppression of heart. “O Margaret!” he said at last with a deep sigh, “why stay you here?”“To see him again to-morrow—yes, to-morrow! But tell me, Roper, why I feel so weak; why my blood runs so cold in my veins; why I no longer have either strength or energy; why, in fact, I feel myself dying, without being able to cease to exist! O William! look at that dark river in front of us, and that black hill lifting its head beyond. Well! when the sky begins to grow white on that side, that will be the light of to-morrow which will dawn; that will be the hour of the executionapproaching; and then you will see the eager crowd come pressing around the boards of the scaffold, come to feast on the cruelty of the misfortune it applauds, to enjoy the death its stupidity has not ordered. You will see them decked out in their ribbons, while the bells of the city will ring for the feast—the great feast ofSt.Thomas; for that is to-morrow, and to-morrow they will come to see my father die. Then all that I love will be torn from me, and nothing more will remain to me on earth. Oh! how happy are the strong: they break or perish. Roper, speak to me of Rochester. I loved him also, that venerable man. No, do not speak of him. Hush! I know all; I have seen everything. They dragged him to the scaffold; he prayed for them while holding his feeble, attenuated neck upon the fatal block; and, detached from the earth, his soul continued in heaven the canticle it had commenced in this world.”“Alas! yes,” said Roper. “They had to carry him to the scaffold on a chair, because he was no longer able to sustain himself.”“Ah! Roper,” cried Margaret, “behold the fatal light! Here is the day!” And she fell, almost deprived of consciousness.“No, Margaret, no; the hour strikes, but it strikes only the small hours of the night. It is not yet day, my beloved—it is not day!”“Oh! how cold I am,” said the young girl, shaking the veil which enveloped her, all humid with the dews of night. “Roper, is there no more hope, then? Do you believe it? Do you believe there is no more hope—that to-morrow I will see my father die?”“Alas!” said Roper, “Pierre Gilles has gone to seek the queen and throw himself at her feet.”“Say not the queen!” cried Margaret. “Give not the name of queen to that woman!”“At least, so they call her,” said Roper. “She is all-powerful; if she would only ask his pardon! But they press her so much! But, no, she will not do it, Margaret; she is a hyena covered with a beautiful skin. She managed to procure the head of Rochester, and with her foul hand dealt it an infamous blow.[144]Ah! Margaret, I have done wrong in speaking to you thus.” And Roper was silent, regretting the words that indignation had forced him to utter.“She struck it!” cried Margaret. “She recoiled not before those white locks dripping with the blood her crimes caused to flow! William, I shudder at it! Oh! can you believe it? The only time that I have seen my father he spoke to me of her with tears in his eyes; he said that he prayed God to raise her soul from out the miserable depths into which she had fallen. Roper, look!—there is day!”“No, Margaret, no!”“But it will come! Ah! how the hours fly, and yet I would be willing.… No! no! nothing. William, I feel as though I were dying! Yet I would wish to see him again—again once more!”Roper took the hand of his affianced. It was burning; the irregular and rapid throbbing of her veins betokened the agony that her soul endured.“Well,” she continued after a moment’s silence, “speak, then—speakto me of Rochester; tell me how the saints die.”“Margaret, I can talk no more; I feel so crushed by the excess of these afflictions that I have not even dared to glance at them.”“Yes, you were deaf and blind; you always will be, and for a long time I have been telling you so. It is a long time, also, since I saw all, since I felt this horrible hour coming on, since I measured the weakness of my hands and curbed the strength of my mind. It is long since I knew that I must remain alone in this world; for this life will not depart from my breast, and without crime I cannot tear it away! I must live, and live deprived of everything. Do you see this weapon, Roper?” And Margaret drew the poignard, the blade of which flashed. “Were I not the daughter of More; feared I not the Lord; if his law, like a seal of brass, had not engraven his commandments on my lips and in my heart, you should see if I would not deliver my father—if Cromwell, if Henry, struck down suddenly by the arm and the hatred of a woman, would not have already, while rolling in the dust and pronouncing my name, cried to the universe that cursed was the day when they had resolved to assassinate my father! In giving my life I became mistress of theirs! Ah! where would they be to-day—this brave king, this powerful favorite? A little infected dust, from which the drunken grave-digger would instinctively turn away! But, William, raise your eyes; look at those numberless stars that gleam so brightly above our heads! The word of Him who has suspended them thus in the immensity of the heavens humbles my spirit, enchains my will. He ordains, I am silent;he speaks, I obey. Impotent by his prohibition alone, I can die, but not resist him.”And Margaret, pressing her lips upon the blade of the threatening weapon, cried: “Yes, I love thee because thou art able to defend or avenge me; and if thy tempered blade remains useless in my hands, say that it is God himself who has ordered it. Let them render thanks, then, to that God whom they provoke and despise; let them return thanks to him; for neither their guards nor their pride, their crimes nor their gold, could have prevented Margaret from sweeping them from the earth which they pollute, and breaking their audacious power like a wisp of straw that is given to the winds!”She turned toward Roper, transported by courage and grief. But she saw that he was not listening, and that, entirely crushed by the misery he experienced, he had not sufficient energy in his soul to try to resist it.“He is already resigned!” she said. An expression of scorn and disgust contracted the features of the young girl; she abruptly withdrew the hand he held in his own; moving away from him, she went and seated herself farther off, and, remaining with her eyes fixed upon the east, awaited the moment of harrowing joy which, while restoring her father to her, would tear him away from her for ever.As the hours slowly tolled, each one awaking a dolorous echo in her heart—when at last she saw the first rays of morning stealing over the heavens, and the rosy tint which precedes the flame of Aurora—she turned again toward Roper; but, happy mortal! his heavy eyelids had lulled his afflicted soul to sleep. As a reaper reposes sweetly in a fieldcovered with rich grain, so Roper slept peacefully with his head resting against the walls of a prison.Margaret arose instantly, and, seized with indignation, she advanced toward him, and, with her hands clasped, stood regarding him. “He sleeps!” she said—“he sleeps! Truly, man is a noble being, full of courage, of energy, of impassibility, of strength of mind. It is thus that they accomplish such great things! Dear Roper, you belong to this mass of men which crowds us in on every side, absorbing and devouring our lives! You are their brother, their friend; like them, during the day, you love that which laughs, that which sings, and you sleep during the night. Well! I will laugh with you, with them. Are you worthy of beholding me weep? No; my father alone shall have my last tears, and carry with him the secret of my soul.”And Margaret, seizing the hand of Roper, shook it violently. He awoke, startled.“It is day!” he said. “Ah! it is day! Margaret—eh! you are weeping.”“No, I am not weeping,” replied the young girl. “I have slept also, slept very well—and I am comforted!”“Comforted! What do you mean? Has Pierre Gilles obtained his pardon? Have they granted his freedom?”“Yes, they have granted his freedom—from life. In a word, they will shorten it, they will drag him from the midst of you. Is that a misfortune or a benefit, an injury or a favor? This is what I cannot decide. But as for me, I remain here!”“Margaret,” cried Roper, “what is wrong with you?” And he gazed at her, astonished at the cuttingirony and the bitter despair expressed in the tone of her voice and imprinted on her features. “I no longer recognize you.”“Yes, I am changed, Roper. Henceforth you shall be my only model. Who is that young woman dressed in gauze, crowned with flowers, whom the light and rapid dance carries far from the banquet and the cups filled with fragrant cordials—who casts far away from her the memory of her father, and has forgotten the grave of her mother? That is the wife of William, Margaret Roper. No, I do not want that name. Go, keep it; give it to some one who resembles yourself, to whom you may bear presents, and who, on hearing you say it, will believe that one can be happy—yes, will believe that it is possible to be happy!”“Margaret,” said Roper, more and more surprised, “I cannot comprehend what you would say.”“Nor do I any more,” replied the young girl, wiping her forehead; for she was warm. “But do you understand at least, Roper, that the city is awake, that they are preparing the scaffold down below, that the soldiers are astir within, that I hear the clanking of their arms, that we are very soon going to see my father pass? Tell me, Roper, how do you contrive to become so unfeeling, to love nothing, to regret nothing? Have you a secret for this? Give it to me—give me that which makes one neither feel nor speak; that one can sleep beside the axe and the prison, when within the prison lies a father whom they are about to immolate!”And she fixed her piercing eyes on him.“Ah! Margaret. Yes, I have slept, I have done wrong; but fatigue overcame me. It seemed to me Isaw him; I dreamed that I had rescued him.”“Yes, your dreams are always happy; but look, Roper, here is the reality.”Margaret withdrew to one side under the walls of the Tower; for the door of the fortress was opened, and they saw a troop of soldiers, fully armed, preparing to march out.“Tower Hill!” cried their commander; and they filed out in great numbers. Others succeeded them; they arranged themselves in two columns, which extended from the gate of the lower to the place of execution, still dyed with the blood of Rochester.Meanwhile, the rumor spread abroad rapidly that they had sent for the two sheriffs; that Sir Thomas More, former lord chancellor, was going to be executed; and from all directions crowds of people rushed precipitately—some remembering the lofty position the condemned had occupied; the greater number, without thinking of anything (coming to see the criminal as they would come to see any other), impelled by instinct, habit, or want of occupation, arrived without aim, as without reflection.Who can paint the anguish of Margaret when she felt herself surrounded, jostled, elbowed, by this turbulent throng, crowding and shouting, which pushed her up against the prison walls, threatening to carry her forcibly from the inch of ground which she had held all night; and more still by this ignoble mob of malefactors, vagabonds, of adventurers of all kinds, who came in those days of murder to learn in the public square what their own end would be, and to behold the funeral couch society had destined for them on the day they should fail in audacity or skill.Who can describe, express, or feel the shame that overwhelmed her soul in spite of her reason, and suffused her pure brow with the blush of ignominy, when she heard them pronounce the name of her father, howling and clapping their hands because the criminal was slow in appearing and the tragedy they awaited did not begin? Her weary eyes sought Pierre Gilles in this tumult, and he was not there. He, at least, would have understood Margaret. She was unable to explain his absence; he had no more hope—unless the queen had detained him. But he must know that the execution was near, that the hour had arrived. And if he had obtained it, and should this pardon arrive too late! A thousand times Margaret, rendered desperate, was on the point of addressing the fickle crowd surrounding her. She wanted to say to them: “I am his daughter! Oh! save my father. He who sacrificed his life, his comforts, his happiness, to govern you wisely, to render you full justice, to reconcile your families, is going to perish unjustly!” But her anxious gaze fell only on faces coarse, stupid, indolent, impassible, or vicious. Then she felt the words die on her lips, while courage and hope expired in her heart.The hours glide away in these mortal agonies; for they pass as rapidly in the excess of sorrow as during the intoxicating seasons of joy and happiness. Presently Margaret heard a confused noise arise. The masses moved; the soldiers drew up closer, brandishing their arms—they were afraid of being overwhelmed. The crowds climbed on everything they could find: the quay, the carts, carriages, steps—they took possession of all, made ladders of everything. Margaretis drawn into this frightful whirlpool; she struggles in vain, trying to make room and to stand firm. A loud clamor arose, re-echoed, increased, was reproduced in the distance. “He comes! he comes!” they cried on all sides. “How pale he is! That is he! that is Sir Thomas More, the old lord chancellor! Oh! how poor he looks. He walks with difficulty; he leans on a stick; he has a cross of red wood in his hand; he bows on each side of him. There are the sheriffs walking behind him. There is a tall black man who follows them. Do you see the lieutenant of the Tower? He is there also. Hush! he makes a sign with his hand. He smiles! How fast they carry him along! One has not time to see him. Are they afraid, then, that we will take him away by force? Eh! no person thinks of that. He has done something very bad, they say. We believed him so good! Ah! here is somebody stopping him. Look! look! He speaks! he speaks! Yes, he speaks!” For Margaret, reduced to despair, animated by a superhuman strength, has broken through the ranks, passed through the guards. She throws herself on the neck of More; she sees him, she embraces him, she clasps him to her throbbing, palpitating bosom.“My daughter! my daughter!” said More, pressing her to his heart; “oh! what anguish to see you here.”And his cheeks, pale and furrowed by suffering, were wet with tears that brought no relief to his soul.At this spectacle the guards themselves were moved. “That is his daughter, his poor daughter!” they exclaimed on all sides; and by a unanimous movement of respect and compassion they stepped aside,forming a circle around him, while the tears flowed from all eyes.“How beautiful she is!” said the men. “How young she is!” exclaimed the women.“My father! my beloved father!” cried Margaret, shuddering, “beg of God that I may not survive you; that I also may soon leave this world when you abandon it! O my father! bless me again, and swear to me that you will ask God to let me die also.”She threw herself on her knees without letting go his hands, which she bathed with a torrent of tears and pressed against her face as though without power to release them.“Dearly beloved daughter!” said More, resting his hand upon her long, dishevelled locks, “oh! yes, may the Lord bless you as I love and bless you myself. You have been a sacred charge, a treasure of joy and happiness which he has given me; I return it to him! He is your first Father—he will never abandon you; and one day—a day not far distant, for the life of man is but a breath that passes in a moment—we shall be reunited, to be no more separated, in a blessed eternity! Margaret, since I have had the happiness of seeing you before I die, take my blessing to your brothers and your sisters; tell them, and also all my good friends, to pray the Lord for me! You know them? O Margaret! let Pierre Gilles learn from you how much I have loved him; how deeply I am touched, and grateful for this voyage he made, I doubt not for me alone. Alas! if I feel a regret in dying, it is because of not being able to tell him this myself. Why is he not with you? But I perceive Roper, my beloved daughter; give him also a thousand blessings. You know that Ihave regarded him for a long time as my son; love him as you have loved myself, and let your tears flow not without consolation, because, since it pleases God to permit me to die to-day, I am perfectly resigned to his will, and I would wish nothing changed.” And Sir Thomas, bending over her, clasped her closely to his heart.“Let me follow you!” she gasped in a low voice; for she was no longer able to speak.“Margaret, you give me pain.”“I would follow you,” she said in still more stifled tones.“Ah! Kingston,” exclaimed More (and the perspiration poured from his forehead), “my good friend, assist me in placing her in the hands of her husband.”“I will do it,” cried a bellowing voice well known to Sir Thomas.“Master Roper, come and take your wife away.” And they saw the hideous face of Cromwell pass, who surveyed those who accompanied the condemned.In the meantime William Roper had succeeded in pushing his way through the crowd; he took the hand of More, and kissed it, weeping.“Take her, my son,” said More, entirely occupied with Margaret. “I confide her to you, I give her to you; be her support, her friend, her defender!” And he turned to resume his march.Margaret, observing this movement, again endeavored to rush toward him; but the crowd hurried on, the guards closed around, and she found herself separated from her father.He cast upon her a last look, which he carried to the skies. She uttered a piercing cry; but already he had moved on and far away.She rushed forward, endeavoringagain to break through the crowd; but curiosity had made them form like a rampart, growing every instant around her.She heard the commands of the military authorities; already she could not see beyond the group that surrounded her; then she almost lost the use of reason. “Save my father! save him!” she cried, extending her suppliant hands toward those who environed her, whose sympathies were diversely excited according to their different characters.“Why have they brought this young woman to this place?” said the good ones. “His daughter, his poor daughter!” murmured the more compassionate. “She looks like a lunatic!” replied the others. “She will die from this; it will kill her. It is most cruel! If the king had only granted his pardon! He might have done it.”“Yes, pardon, pardon!” repeated Margaret, frenzied and wandering. “They have granted his pardon, I assure you. Pierre Gilles has been to Hampton Court to find that woman. Roper, is it not so? Roper, I am dying; take me away.” And she grew pale and seemed ready to faint. Three or four hands were immediately advanced to sustain her; but Roper would not suffer them to touch her, and, raising her in his arms, he asked them to make way for him to lead her out of the crowd and from the place. The crowd opened with respect, and he assisted Margaret to the same place where she had passed the night awaiting, with her eyes fixed on the horizon, the terrible day which was to remove her for ever from her father.“It is daylight, daylight,” said Margaret. “Yonder, Roper! And when night comes on, he will bealready cold in death! O Roper! all this in one day. William, give him back to me! What have they done with him? Oh! no, he will not die. He is going to the king!”She kept her eyes fast closed, and poor Roper regarded her with anxiety.“They have forced him away! You know the place where the soldiers have taken him. I have seen it—I have seen everything. But that was yesterday, Roper. I have lost my reason,” she suddenly exclaimed, opening her eyes, filled with terror. “Tell me, where is he? They will let me bury his body, will they not? I will kiss his face, I will embalm him; and you will bury me beside him, will you not, Roper? They will not leave it on the bridge—that head; I will remain on my knees until they give it to me! O Heaven! dost thou hear—dost thou hear the cries of the people? All is ended; the crime is consummated! My father has left the earth! Roper, let us go to the church; I want to pray—to pray until eternity!”Alas! Margaret spoke truly. Arriving at the scaffold, More, after having embraced the executioner and given him a gold angel in token of forgiveness, was beheaded by the same axe, upon the very block on which the head of his friend Rochester had fallen a few hours before.Thus perished these two illustrious men, the glory and honor of England. Thus began the cruel schism which since then has torn so many children from the church, separated a great number of Christians from the common trunk, and deprived, in the course of centuries, so many souls of the knowledge of the eternal and indivisible truth.And now, when old England unrolls before the eyes of the eagerexplorer of the past the long list of her kings, she places one of her fingers upon the bloody diadem which encircles the brow of HenryVIII., and with the other she points out to the moved heart the spot where, their dust mingled together, sleep within the walls of her most ancient fortress the victims of the fury of this king. For she also, that first cause of so many woes—the young Anne Boleyn, so proud of her fatal beauty—passed from the throne to the scaffold at the very moment when Catherine was dying of misery, pain, and neglect in the depths of an obscure city. The odious Cromwell, who had guided her to that scaffold, was not long in following her, and his ignoble blood was at last brought to expiate in the same place that of the illustrious More.*   *   *   *   *Such, reader, is the recital which as a faithful historian I resolved to set before you. A book is a thought. Mine has been written to emphasize a truth in our days too often forgotten—which is, that religion alone can lead men to happiness and perfection; that, being the most perfect law which it is possible to conceive of or attain, it is to her alone we should attach ourselves, and it is by her alone the state will see reared in its midst wise and just rulers or noble and generous citizens; that all, in fine, will see wisdom, science, order, and prosperity flourish.Princesse de Craon.THE END.[143]The learned Erasmus was then at the height of his brilliant fame. After numerous visits to England, where he had formed an intimate friendship with Thomas More, he fixed his residence at Bâle, in Switzerland. Admired by all the princes of his time, by all his learned contemporaries and a crowd of illustrious men, he contributed by his powerful writings to restrain Germany from barbarism.[144]This fact is related by an English historian, who has written the life of the Bishop of Rochester. The same author adds that Anne Boleyn, in giving the blow, cut her finger against one of the teeth which the axe had broken; that there came a sore on the finger; that they had the greatest difficulty in getting it healed, and she carried the scar until her death.

SIR THOMAS MORE.A HISTORICAL ROMANCEFROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.XVII.Whenthe great city lay buried in that obscurity which the mantle of night had thrown over all, and while she seemed to sleep, resting on her bed of earth, by the banks of the river that flowed for ever with a measured sound—when she seemed to sleep at last, although neither the scholar, nor the afflicted, nor the criminal whom she enclosed in her bosom could have extinguished in the depths of their being the fire of intelligence which consumed them—there was to be seen a silent and fugitive figure gliding along by the walls of the Tower, upon which a noble and slender form was reflected. The light footfall made no sound, the sighs of her heart were stifled, and the folds of her veil hung motionless. She seated herself on the stone threshold of the awful gate, and for a long time wept in silence.“Naught!” she said. “Not a sound to be heard. These walls are like the hearts of the judges. Children weep,” she said again. “What are tears but weakness and water? Not a gleam! It seems they have here neither fire nor life. What is this that consumes my heart? Weep, women! weep in your silken robes, under your downy coverings! As for me, it is the night wind dries my tears, and the damp earth drinks them up! When wilt thou cease to weep, and when will the heart of Margaret feel revived?… But why be astonished to feel it tremble? Has it not been broken like a preciousvase which can never more be mended?“‘Come, Margaret, white Margaret!’ they used to say when you trod on the grass of the fields, Come, death, or yet a moment of life.”And the young girl, standing on tiptoe, with strong arm and powerful effort, raised the heavy bronze griffin, which fell resounding upon the brass of the doors, and then she started, for at times she was a woman.But there was no response; and when the sound of the iron had ceased to vibrate, and, it seemed to her, had exhausted itself in the air, nothing was heard but the monotonous dashing of the waves which came to die at the foot of the wall; and nothing more disturbed the silence of the night.“Deaf as the pity in their souls!” she said after some moments.And this time she knocked without flinching; for already Margaret had recovered from her fears. But a long and mournful silence continued to reign.Whilst she was trying so ineffectually to reach her father, Sir Thomas re-entered the Tower, exhausted by fatigue. He had been confined in a still more gloomy and narrow cell. A miserable lamp, high placed, dimly lighted the obscurity. He was seated in a corner, and, alone at least, he went over in his mind the agonies he had enduredin that fatal journey. “Where is my daughter now?” he said to himself. “Alas! I saw her but an instant going out from before the judges. She will have seen that axe turned toward me. She will have said to herself there is no more hope; that I was branded with the seal of the condemned; that what she had heard was indeed true. If only she had returned to Chelsea! For they will not permit me to linger: Cromwell’s eyes gleamed with a ferocious light. Yet what have I done to this man to make him hate me so intensely? My God, permit me not to be betrayed into an emotion of hatred against” (Sir Thomas hesitated)—“against my brother,” he continued with courage; “for, after all, he is a man like myself, formed in the same mould, animated by the same intelligence; and it is better to be persecuted than to be the persecutor. Pardon him, then, O my God! Let your mercy be extended toward him, surround him on all sides, and never remember against him the evil he has wrought on me.”While reflecting thus Sir Thomas suddenly heard a slight noise. He paused, and, seized with inexpressible anxiety, listened almost without breathing.“It was in such manner he walked! It is he! It is Rochester!” he cried. “But no, I am mistaken; that cannot be,” he said, casting his eyes around him. “They have changed my cell; alas! I could not hear him even should he be there. It is an error of my troubled imagination.”But the noise increased, and Sir Thomas soon heard them opening the doors which led to his cell. Some one was approaching.“Again!” he said. “They will not, then, allow me a moment ofrepose.” And he saw Sir Thomas Pope coming in, bearing a roll of paper in his right hand.Pope approached More and presented the paper.Sir Thomas calmly took it from his hands, and, looking at Pope, said: “What! Master Pope, the king has already signed the death-warrant?” Glancing over the paper, he saw that his execution was set down for the next morning at nine o’clock.“The king, in his ineffable clemency,” said Pope with an air of constraint, “commutes your punishment to that of decapitation.”“I am much beholden to his majesty,” said Sir Thomas. “Still, good Master Pope, I hope that my children and my friends may never have need of any such favor.”More smiled at first; then he regarded Pope with an expression of indefinable melancholy, and was silent.“It is true—it is too true,” stammered Pope, “that this is not a great favor. But permit me, Sir Thomas, to avow to you that your conduct appears to me so strangely obstinate that I cannot explain it, and that you yourself seem to have had the wish to irritate the king against you to the last degree. Thus, you abandon your family, you leave your home, you lose your head, and all rather than take an oath to which our bishops have readily consented.”“Yes, consented, and not wished to take,” replied Sir Thomas, “partly through fear, partly through surprise. They have taken it, you say; but I fear that they may be already repenting it. Good Master Pope, if you live you will surely see many strange events taking place in our unhappy country. In separating herself, in spite of the law of God,from the Church of Rome, you will see England change her face; intestine wars will rend her; the blood of her children will flow in every direction for centuries, perchance. Who can foretell whither the path of error will lead us when once we have taken the first step? Doubtless we are still Christians; but Christians who, separated from the mother that gave them birth, will soon have lost the revivifying spirit they have received from her. The Catholic faith, I know, cannot perish from the earth; but it can depart from one country into another. If, in three hundred years from now, we were permitted to return, you and I, to this world, we should find the faith, as to-day, pure from all error, one, and resting upon the indivisible truth, yet submitting to that supreme Head, to this key ofSt.Peter, which indeed some mortal men shall have carried a moment in their hands, and which is so violently attacked to-day. But my country, this land that I love—for it holds the ashes of my father—what is it destined to undergo? The incoherence and diversity of human opinions; the violence, the absurdities of the passions which shall have dictated them. Divided into a thousand sects, a thousand clashing opinions, you will not find a single family, perhaps, where they are united in one common faith, in the same hope and the same charity! And this divine Word, the Sacred Scriptures, which we have received from our fathers, abandoned to the ignorance and the pride of a pretended liberty, will have, perhaps, become only the source of horrible crimes and frightful cruelties, in place of being the foundation of all good and of every virtue!”“Verily, Sir Thomas,” said Pope,“you frighten me! How can it hap that the ruin and disasters you have described should be in store for us? No, no, I do not believe it; because it is then you would see us all bound up around the centre of unity which they think to destroy to-day by a word!—expressions of a spiritual power which the prince may not, in fact, exercise.”“He may not, as you say,” replied Sir Thomas; “but he will exercise it nevertheless, and at least I shall not have to reproach myself with having contributed to it. Oh! no,” he continued, “no; and I am happy to shed my blood in testimony of this truth. For listen, Master Pope: I have not sacrificed twenty years of my life in the service of the state without having studied what were her true interests, and consequently those of society, which is at the same time her foundation and support; and I declare to you that I have recognized and am thoroughly convinced that the Catholic religion, the realization of the figurative and prophetic law given to the Jews, the development and complete perfection of the natural law, can alone be the foundation of a prosperous and happy society, because it alone possesses the highest degree of morals possible to attain; it alone bears fruit in the heart; it alone can restrain, and is able even to destroy, that selfishness, natural to man, which leads him to sacrifice everything to his desires and gratifications—a selfishness which, abandoned to itself and carried to its greatest length, renders all social order impossible, and transforms men into a crowd of enraged enemies bent on mutual destruction.“All that tends to disrupt, then, all that would alter or attack, this excellent religion, is a mortal blowaimed at the country and its citizens, and necessarily tends to deprive them of that which ensures their dignity, their safety, their happiness, their hopes, and their future. Look around you at the universe, and behold on its surface the people of those unhappy countries where the light of the Catholic faith has been extinguished or has not yet been kindled. Study their governments, and behold in them the most monstrous despotisms, where blood flows like water, and the life of man is considered of less value than that of the frivolous animal which amuses him. Read the cruel laws their ferocity has dictated; learn the still more crying acts of injustice they commit, and how they pursue, as with a tearing lash, those whose weakness and stupidity have delivered them up as slaves; tremble at the recital of the tortures and barbarities they inflict before death, to which they condemn their victims without appeal as without investigation; behold the arts, spiritual affection, sublime poesy, perish there; ignorance, instability, misery, and terror succeed them, and reign without interruption and without restraint. Ah! these noble ideas of right, of justice, of order and humanity, which govern us, and ensure among us the triumph of the incredulous and proud philosopher, which makes him say and think that they alone are sufficient for society—he perceives not, blind as he is, that these are prizes in the hand of religion, who, extends them to him, and that, if he speaks like her, she speaks still better than he. I do not say—no, I do not say—that we will fall as low as the Turk, the Indian, or the American savage. So long as one glimmer of the Gospel, one souvenir of its maxims, shall remain standing in the midstof us, we will not lose all that we have received since our ancestors came out of the forests where they wandered, subsisting on the flesh of wild animals; but we will begin to recede from the truth, we will cover it with clouds; they will become darker and darker, and soon, if we still go on, it will be no longer with a firm and resolute step, but rather like gloomy travellers wandering in a vast desert without a breath of air or a drop of water.”Pope listened to Sir Thomas without daring to interrupt him, and felt his heart touched by what he said. For this admirable man possessed the faculty of attracting all who saw him immediately toward him; and when they heard him speak, the strength, the justness of his thoughts and his arguments penetrated little by little into their minds, until, almost without perceiving it, they found themselves entirely changed, and astonished to feel that they were of the same opinion as himself.Pope leaned against a stool which was there, and remained very thoughtful; for he had taken the oath himself, without dreaming that it could result in such serious consequences. Neither his convictions, however, nor his courage were such as would make him desire to give his life for the truth; but he could not refrain from admiring this devotion in the illustrious man before him. He looked at him without speaking, and seemed entirely confounded.Mistaking the cause, and seeing him abstracted and silent, Sir Thomas supposed the conversation had wearied Pope; he therefore ceased speaking, and, taking up the death-warrant, he read it a second time. At the end his eyes filled with tears and his sight grew dim.“It is, then, fixed for to-morrow!” he exclaimed—“to-morrow morning. One night only! Oh! how I wish they would permit me to write to Erasmus.[143]Pope,” said he, “shall I not be permitted to see once more, for the last time, my dearly-beloved daughter? I fear that she may be still in the city. I would like her to be sent away—that Roper should take her. Ah! Master Pope, it is not the riches or honors of this world which are difficult to sacrifice, but the affections of the heart, of the soul that lives within us, which is entirely ourselves, without which the rest is nothing.” And he again relapsed into silence.“I do not think you will be able to see her,” said Pope, replying to the question of Sir Thomas; “and—even—” he added with painful hesitation, “I am also charged to ask you not to make any remarks to the people on the scaffold. The king hath expressly so willed, and then he will permit your wife and children to assist at your interment.”“Ah!” replied Sir Thomas, “I thank his majesty for manifesting so much solicitude about my poor interment; but it matters little where these miserable bones be laid when I have abandoned them. God, who has made them out of nothing, will be able to find the ashes and recall them a second time into being when it shall please him to restore them to that indestructible life which he has so graciously vouchsafed to promise them.”“You wish to speak, then?” answered Pope. “Nevertheless, I believeit would be better not to anger the king more.”“No, no!” replied Sir Thomas, “my dear Master Pope, you are mistaken. Since the king desires it, I will not speak. Most certainly I intended doing so; but since he forbids it, I will forbear. If they refuse me permission to see my daughter,” replied Sir Thomas, “I hope, at least, I may be able to see the Bishop of Rochester; since he has taken the oath, they will not fear.”“Taken the oath!” cried Pope. “Why, he has been executed; he died to-day!”“He died to-day!” repeated Sir Thomas. “My friend died to-day! O Cromwell! May God, whose power is infinite, hear my voice, grant my requests: may the same dangers unite us, that, following close in thy footsteps, my last sigh may be breathed with thine!”And More, plunged in the deepest grief, slowly repeated the memorable words, the solemn words, which the holy bishop had pronounced in presence of the Lord and of his friend during the vigil ofSt.Thomas, when they were alone together in his home at Chelsea.“Rochester would not take the oath, then!” continued More in a stifled voice, clasping his hands and elevating them toward heaven.“Alas! no,” replied Pope.“Cromwell told me he had.”“He lied,” answered Pope, and his eyes filled with tears.“He would not swear?”“Never!”“Pope,” said More, “I beg you to let me write to Erasmus. To-morrow I shall be no more! You are the last living man to whom I shall be able to speak.”“Ah! Sir Thomas,” cried Popeuneasily, “if that letter were seized, what would become of me?”“Let me write a few words on this leaf,” replied Sir Thomas, looking at a leaf of white paper belonging to the book which contained his condemnation—“a word on this leaf,” he continued. “Pope, you can cut it off and send it later when there will be no danger for you. Nay, good Pope, grant me this favor,” he added. “I have neither pen nor ink; but I have here a piece of charcoal, which I have already tried to sharpen.”“Ah! Sir Thomas,” replied Pope, “I have not the heart to refuse you; however, I shall have cause, perhaps, to repent it.”“No! no!” cried Sir Thomas. “If you cannot send him this last farewell without being afraid, you can burn it.”“Write, then; I consent,” said Pope; and he handed the death-warrant to Sir Thomas, who had returned it to him.More seized it, and wrote the following words:“Erasmus! O Erasmus! my friend, this is the last time I shall have the happiness of pronouncing your name. An entire life, O my friend! is passed; it has glided by in a moment. Behold one about to end like a day that is closed. I have loved you as long as I have had breath; as long as I have felt my heart throb in my bosom the name of Erasmus has reigned there. Alas! I have so many things to say to you. Though the words die on my lips, your heart alone will be able to comprehend mine. May it enter; may it hear in my soul all that More has wished to say to Erasmus!“When you receive this page, I shall be no more; it is still attached to the writ which contains my sentence of death. Erasmus, I am going to leave Margaret. I abandon my children! Our friend Pierre Gilles is here. I saw him for a moment—the moment when they were pronouncing sentence on me. Without doubt, to-morrow morning, Ishall see him at the foot of the scaffold. I shall be kept at a distance from him; I shall not be able to say a single word to him. My eyes will be directed toward him, my hand will be stretched out; but my heart will not be permitted to speak to him! O Erasmus! how I suffer. And Margaret—O my friend! if you had seen her, how pale she was, what anguish was painted on all her features. I could wish that she loved me less: she would not suffer so much in seeing me die. Erasmus, not one minute! Time is short; the hour approaches. Oh! when I could write those long letters so peaceably, when science alone and the good of humanity occupied us both; when I saw those letters despatched so quietly to go in search of you, and said to myself: ‘In so many days I shall receive his reply!’… No more replies, Erasmus! If ever you come to England, you will ask in what corner they have thrown my ashes. Oh! what would become of me if I were not a Christian? What happiness to feel our faith rising up from the depths of wretchedness, to hear all our groans and lamentions, and to answer them! I die a Christian! I die for this faith so pure and beautiful! for that faith which is the happiness and glory of the human race. At this thought I feel myself reanimated; new strength inspires my heart; hope inundates my soul. I shall see you all again. Yes, one day—one day after a long absence—I shall clasp you once more to my bosom in the presence of God himself. I shall see again my daughter! We will find ourselves invested with our same bodies. ‘I shall see my God,’ said Job; ‘for I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that I shall rise again at the last day; I will go out of this world into that which I am about to enter, and then I shall see my God. It will be I who shall see him, and not another.’“Erasmus, to live for ever, to love for ever! Farewell.“Your brother, your friend,“Thomas More.”The charcoal began to crumble in his hands. He was scarcely able to trace the last words. He pressed his lips on them and returned the book to Pope.Meanwhile, Margaret, tired ofknocking, and losing all hope of reaching her father, was seated upon the stone step before the door of the prison, and, being wrapped in her veil, she remained motionless and mute, like a statue of stone whose head, bowed upon its garments, is the personification of sorrow and silence.Thus she sat absorbed in thought, and the burning tears had bathed her hands and ran down on her knees, when the footstep of a man who was approaching from the quay aroused her from her reverie. Alarmed, she arose abruptly, and, placing her hand upon a long and sharp dagger she had attached to her side, she stood awaiting the intruder; but she recognized Roper.“Margaret,” he exclaimed, “what are you doing there?” And he spoke these few words to her in a melancholy tone of voice more expressive of pain than reproach; because he sought her, knowing well where he would find her.“It is you, Roper,” said the young girl, and she resumed her seat as before. William Roper then came and seated himself by her side; taking her cold and wet hand, he pressed it to his lips with an inexpressible oppression of heart. “O Margaret!” he said at last with a deep sigh, “why stay you here?”“To see him again to-morrow—yes, to-morrow! But tell me, Roper, why I feel so weak; why my blood runs so cold in my veins; why I no longer have either strength or energy; why, in fact, I feel myself dying, without being able to cease to exist! O William! look at that dark river in front of us, and that black hill lifting its head beyond. Well! when the sky begins to grow white on that side, that will be the light of to-morrow which will dawn; that will be the hour of the executionapproaching; and then you will see the eager crowd come pressing around the boards of the scaffold, come to feast on the cruelty of the misfortune it applauds, to enjoy the death its stupidity has not ordered. You will see them decked out in their ribbons, while the bells of the city will ring for the feast—the great feast ofSt.Thomas; for that is to-morrow, and to-morrow they will come to see my father die. Then all that I love will be torn from me, and nothing more will remain to me on earth. Oh! how happy are the strong: they break or perish. Roper, speak to me of Rochester. I loved him also, that venerable man. No, do not speak of him. Hush! I know all; I have seen everything. They dragged him to the scaffold; he prayed for them while holding his feeble, attenuated neck upon the fatal block; and, detached from the earth, his soul continued in heaven the canticle it had commenced in this world.”“Alas! yes,” said Roper. “They had to carry him to the scaffold on a chair, because he was no longer able to sustain himself.”“Ah! Roper,” cried Margaret, “behold the fatal light! Here is the day!” And she fell, almost deprived of consciousness.“No, Margaret, no; the hour strikes, but it strikes only the small hours of the night. It is not yet day, my beloved—it is not day!”“Oh! how cold I am,” said the young girl, shaking the veil which enveloped her, all humid with the dews of night. “Roper, is there no more hope, then? Do you believe it? Do you believe there is no more hope—that to-morrow I will see my father die?”“Alas!” said Roper, “Pierre Gilles has gone to seek the queen and throw himself at her feet.”“Say not the queen!” cried Margaret. “Give not the name of queen to that woman!”“At least, so they call her,” said Roper. “She is all-powerful; if she would only ask his pardon! But they press her so much! But, no, she will not do it, Margaret; she is a hyena covered with a beautiful skin. She managed to procure the head of Rochester, and with her foul hand dealt it an infamous blow.[144]Ah! Margaret, I have done wrong in speaking to you thus.” And Roper was silent, regretting the words that indignation had forced him to utter.“She struck it!” cried Margaret. “She recoiled not before those white locks dripping with the blood her crimes caused to flow! William, I shudder at it! Oh! can you believe it? The only time that I have seen my father he spoke to me of her with tears in his eyes; he said that he prayed God to raise her soul from out the miserable depths into which she had fallen. Roper, look!—there is day!”“No, Margaret, no!”“But it will come! Ah! how the hours fly, and yet I would be willing.… No! no! nothing. William, I feel as though I were dying! Yet I would wish to see him again—again once more!”Roper took the hand of his affianced. It was burning; the irregular and rapid throbbing of her veins betokened the agony that her soul endured.“Well,” she continued after a moment’s silence, “speak, then—speakto me of Rochester; tell me how the saints die.”“Margaret, I can talk no more; I feel so crushed by the excess of these afflictions that I have not even dared to glance at them.”“Yes, you were deaf and blind; you always will be, and for a long time I have been telling you so. It is a long time, also, since I saw all, since I felt this horrible hour coming on, since I measured the weakness of my hands and curbed the strength of my mind. It is long since I knew that I must remain alone in this world; for this life will not depart from my breast, and without crime I cannot tear it away! I must live, and live deprived of everything. Do you see this weapon, Roper?” And Margaret drew the poignard, the blade of which flashed. “Were I not the daughter of More; feared I not the Lord; if his law, like a seal of brass, had not engraven his commandments on my lips and in my heart, you should see if I would not deliver my father—if Cromwell, if Henry, struck down suddenly by the arm and the hatred of a woman, would not have already, while rolling in the dust and pronouncing my name, cried to the universe that cursed was the day when they had resolved to assassinate my father! In giving my life I became mistress of theirs! Ah! where would they be to-day—this brave king, this powerful favorite? A little infected dust, from which the drunken grave-digger would instinctively turn away! But, William, raise your eyes; look at those numberless stars that gleam so brightly above our heads! The word of Him who has suspended them thus in the immensity of the heavens humbles my spirit, enchains my will. He ordains, I am silent;he speaks, I obey. Impotent by his prohibition alone, I can die, but not resist him.”And Margaret, pressing her lips upon the blade of the threatening weapon, cried: “Yes, I love thee because thou art able to defend or avenge me; and if thy tempered blade remains useless in my hands, say that it is God himself who has ordered it. Let them render thanks, then, to that God whom they provoke and despise; let them return thanks to him; for neither their guards nor their pride, their crimes nor their gold, could have prevented Margaret from sweeping them from the earth which they pollute, and breaking their audacious power like a wisp of straw that is given to the winds!”She turned toward Roper, transported by courage and grief. But she saw that he was not listening, and that, entirely crushed by the misery he experienced, he had not sufficient energy in his soul to try to resist it.“He is already resigned!” she said. An expression of scorn and disgust contracted the features of the young girl; she abruptly withdrew the hand he held in his own; moving away from him, she went and seated herself farther off, and, remaining with her eyes fixed upon the east, awaited the moment of harrowing joy which, while restoring her father to her, would tear him away from her for ever.As the hours slowly tolled, each one awaking a dolorous echo in her heart—when at last she saw the first rays of morning stealing over the heavens, and the rosy tint which precedes the flame of Aurora—she turned again toward Roper; but, happy mortal! his heavy eyelids had lulled his afflicted soul to sleep. As a reaper reposes sweetly in a fieldcovered with rich grain, so Roper slept peacefully with his head resting against the walls of a prison.Margaret arose instantly, and, seized with indignation, she advanced toward him, and, with her hands clasped, stood regarding him. “He sleeps!” she said—“he sleeps! Truly, man is a noble being, full of courage, of energy, of impassibility, of strength of mind. It is thus that they accomplish such great things! Dear Roper, you belong to this mass of men which crowds us in on every side, absorbing and devouring our lives! You are their brother, their friend; like them, during the day, you love that which laughs, that which sings, and you sleep during the night. Well! I will laugh with you, with them. Are you worthy of beholding me weep? No; my father alone shall have my last tears, and carry with him the secret of my soul.”And Margaret, seizing the hand of Roper, shook it violently. He awoke, startled.“It is day!” he said. “Ah! it is day! Margaret—eh! you are weeping.”“No, I am not weeping,” replied the young girl. “I have slept also, slept very well—and I am comforted!”“Comforted! What do you mean? Has Pierre Gilles obtained his pardon? Have they granted his freedom?”“Yes, they have granted his freedom—from life. In a word, they will shorten it, they will drag him from the midst of you. Is that a misfortune or a benefit, an injury or a favor? This is what I cannot decide. But as for me, I remain here!”“Margaret,” cried Roper, “what is wrong with you?” And he gazed at her, astonished at the cuttingirony and the bitter despair expressed in the tone of her voice and imprinted on her features. “I no longer recognize you.”“Yes, I am changed, Roper. Henceforth you shall be my only model. Who is that young woman dressed in gauze, crowned with flowers, whom the light and rapid dance carries far from the banquet and the cups filled with fragrant cordials—who casts far away from her the memory of her father, and has forgotten the grave of her mother? That is the wife of William, Margaret Roper. No, I do not want that name. Go, keep it; give it to some one who resembles yourself, to whom you may bear presents, and who, on hearing you say it, will believe that one can be happy—yes, will believe that it is possible to be happy!”“Margaret,” said Roper, more and more surprised, “I cannot comprehend what you would say.”“Nor do I any more,” replied the young girl, wiping her forehead; for she was warm. “But do you understand at least, Roper, that the city is awake, that they are preparing the scaffold down below, that the soldiers are astir within, that I hear the clanking of their arms, that we are very soon going to see my father pass? Tell me, Roper, how do you contrive to become so unfeeling, to love nothing, to regret nothing? Have you a secret for this? Give it to me—give me that which makes one neither feel nor speak; that one can sleep beside the axe and the prison, when within the prison lies a father whom they are about to immolate!”And she fixed her piercing eyes on him.“Ah! Margaret. Yes, I have slept, I have done wrong; but fatigue overcame me. It seemed to me Isaw him; I dreamed that I had rescued him.”“Yes, your dreams are always happy; but look, Roper, here is the reality.”Margaret withdrew to one side under the walls of the Tower; for the door of the fortress was opened, and they saw a troop of soldiers, fully armed, preparing to march out.“Tower Hill!” cried their commander; and they filed out in great numbers. Others succeeded them; they arranged themselves in two columns, which extended from the gate of the lower to the place of execution, still dyed with the blood of Rochester.Meanwhile, the rumor spread abroad rapidly that they had sent for the two sheriffs; that Sir Thomas More, former lord chancellor, was going to be executed; and from all directions crowds of people rushed precipitately—some remembering the lofty position the condemned had occupied; the greater number, without thinking of anything (coming to see the criminal as they would come to see any other), impelled by instinct, habit, or want of occupation, arrived without aim, as without reflection.Who can paint the anguish of Margaret when she felt herself surrounded, jostled, elbowed, by this turbulent throng, crowding and shouting, which pushed her up against the prison walls, threatening to carry her forcibly from the inch of ground which she had held all night; and more still by this ignoble mob of malefactors, vagabonds, of adventurers of all kinds, who came in those days of murder to learn in the public square what their own end would be, and to behold the funeral couch society had destined for them on the day they should fail in audacity or skill.Who can describe, express, or feel the shame that overwhelmed her soul in spite of her reason, and suffused her pure brow with the blush of ignominy, when she heard them pronounce the name of her father, howling and clapping their hands because the criminal was slow in appearing and the tragedy they awaited did not begin? Her weary eyes sought Pierre Gilles in this tumult, and he was not there. He, at least, would have understood Margaret. She was unable to explain his absence; he had no more hope—unless the queen had detained him. But he must know that the execution was near, that the hour had arrived. And if he had obtained it, and should this pardon arrive too late! A thousand times Margaret, rendered desperate, was on the point of addressing the fickle crowd surrounding her. She wanted to say to them: “I am his daughter! Oh! save my father. He who sacrificed his life, his comforts, his happiness, to govern you wisely, to render you full justice, to reconcile your families, is going to perish unjustly!” But her anxious gaze fell only on faces coarse, stupid, indolent, impassible, or vicious. Then she felt the words die on her lips, while courage and hope expired in her heart.The hours glide away in these mortal agonies; for they pass as rapidly in the excess of sorrow as during the intoxicating seasons of joy and happiness. Presently Margaret heard a confused noise arise. The masses moved; the soldiers drew up closer, brandishing their arms—they were afraid of being overwhelmed. The crowds climbed on everything they could find: the quay, the carts, carriages, steps—they took possession of all, made ladders of everything. Margaretis drawn into this frightful whirlpool; she struggles in vain, trying to make room and to stand firm. A loud clamor arose, re-echoed, increased, was reproduced in the distance. “He comes! he comes!” they cried on all sides. “How pale he is! That is he! that is Sir Thomas More, the old lord chancellor! Oh! how poor he looks. He walks with difficulty; he leans on a stick; he has a cross of red wood in his hand; he bows on each side of him. There are the sheriffs walking behind him. There is a tall black man who follows them. Do you see the lieutenant of the Tower? He is there also. Hush! he makes a sign with his hand. He smiles! How fast they carry him along! One has not time to see him. Are they afraid, then, that we will take him away by force? Eh! no person thinks of that. He has done something very bad, they say. We believed him so good! Ah! here is somebody stopping him. Look! look! He speaks! he speaks! Yes, he speaks!” For Margaret, reduced to despair, animated by a superhuman strength, has broken through the ranks, passed through the guards. She throws herself on the neck of More; she sees him, she embraces him, she clasps him to her throbbing, palpitating bosom.“My daughter! my daughter!” said More, pressing her to his heart; “oh! what anguish to see you here.”And his cheeks, pale and furrowed by suffering, were wet with tears that brought no relief to his soul.At this spectacle the guards themselves were moved. “That is his daughter, his poor daughter!” they exclaimed on all sides; and by a unanimous movement of respect and compassion they stepped aside,forming a circle around him, while the tears flowed from all eyes.“How beautiful she is!” said the men. “How young she is!” exclaimed the women.“My father! my beloved father!” cried Margaret, shuddering, “beg of God that I may not survive you; that I also may soon leave this world when you abandon it! O my father! bless me again, and swear to me that you will ask God to let me die also.”She threw herself on her knees without letting go his hands, which she bathed with a torrent of tears and pressed against her face as though without power to release them.“Dearly beloved daughter!” said More, resting his hand upon her long, dishevelled locks, “oh! yes, may the Lord bless you as I love and bless you myself. You have been a sacred charge, a treasure of joy and happiness which he has given me; I return it to him! He is your first Father—he will never abandon you; and one day—a day not far distant, for the life of man is but a breath that passes in a moment—we shall be reunited, to be no more separated, in a blessed eternity! Margaret, since I have had the happiness of seeing you before I die, take my blessing to your brothers and your sisters; tell them, and also all my good friends, to pray the Lord for me! You know them? O Margaret! let Pierre Gilles learn from you how much I have loved him; how deeply I am touched, and grateful for this voyage he made, I doubt not for me alone. Alas! if I feel a regret in dying, it is because of not being able to tell him this myself. Why is he not with you? But I perceive Roper, my beloved daughter; give him also a thousand blessings. You know that Ihave regarded him for a long time as my son; love him as you have loved myself, and let your tears flow not without consolation, because, since it pleases God to permit me to die to-day, I am perfectly resigned to his will, and I would wish nothing changed.” And Sir Thomas, bending over her, clasped her closely to his heart.“Let me follow you!” she gasped in a low voice; for she was no longer able to speak.“Margaret, you give me pain.”“I would follow you,” she said in still more stifled tones.“Ah! Kingston,” exclaimed More (and the perspiration poured from his forehead), “my good friend, assist me in placing her in the hands of her husband.”“I will do it,” cried a bellowing voice well known to Sir Thomas.“Master Roper, come and take your wife away.” And they saw the hideous face of Cromwell pass, who surveyed those who accompanied the condemned.In the meantime William Roper had succeeded in pushing his way through the crowd; he took the hand of More, and kissed it, weeping.“Take her, my son,” said More, entirely occupied with Margaret. “I confide her to you, I give her to you; be her support, her friend, her defender!” And he turned to resume his march.Margaret, observing this movement, again endeavored to rush toward him; but the crowd hurried on, the guards closed around, and she found herself separated from her father.He cast upon her a last look, which he carried to the skies. She uttered a piercing cry; but already he had moved on and far away.She rushed forward, endeavoringagain to break through the crowd; but curiosity had made them form like a rampart, growing every instant around her.She heard the commands of the military authorities; already she could not see beyond the group that surrounded her; then she almost lost the use of reason. “Save my father! save him!” she cried, extending her suppliant hands toward those who environed her, whose sympathies were diversely excited according to their different characters.“Why have they brought this young woman to this place?” said the good ones. “His daughter, his poor daughter!” murmured the more compassionate. “She looks like a lunatic!” replied the others. “She will die from this; it will kill her. It is most cruel! If the king had only granted his pardon! He might have done it.”“Yes, pardon, pardon!” repeated Margaret, frenzied and wandering. “They have granted his pardon, I assure you. Pierre Gilles has been to Hampton Court to find that woman. Roper, is it not so? Roper, I am dying; take me away.” And she grew pale and seemed ready to faint. Three or four hands were immediately advanced to sustain her; but Roper would not suffer them to touch her, and, raising her in his arms, he asked them to make way for him to lead her out of the crowd and from the place. The crowd opened with respect, and he assisted Margaret to the same place where she had passed the night awaiting, with her eyes fixed on the horizon, the terrible day which was to remove her for ever from her father.“It is daylight, daylight,” said Margaret. “Yonder, Roper! And when night comes on, he will bealready cold in death! O Roper! all this in one day. William, give him back to me! What have they done with him? Oh! no, he will not die. He is going to the king!”She kept her eyes fast closed, and poor Roper regarded her with anxiety.“They have forced him away! You know the place where the soldiers have taken him. I have seen it—I have seen everything. But that was yesterday, Roper. I have lost my reason,” she suddenly exclaimed, opening her eyes, filled with terror. “Tell me, where is he? They will let me bury his body, will they not? I will kiss his face, I will embalm him; and you will bury me beside him, will you not, Roper? They will not leave it on the bridge—that head; I will remain on my knees until they give it to me! O Heaven! dost thou hear—dost thou hear the cries of the people? All is ended; the crime is consummated! My father has left the earth! Roper, let us go to the church; I want to pray—to pray until eternity!”Alas! Margaret spoke truly. Arriving at the scaffold, More, after having embraced the executioner and given him a gold angel in token of forgiveness, was beheaded by the same axe, upon the very block on which the head of his friend Rochester had fallen a few hours before.Thus perished these two illustrious men, the glory and honor of England. Thus began the cruel schism which since then has torn so many children from the church, separated a great number of Christians from the common trunk, and deprived, in the course of centuries, so many souls of the knowledge of the eternal and indivisible truth.And now, when old England unrolls before the eyes of the eagerexplorer of the past the long list of her kings, she places one of her fingers upon the bloody diadem which encircles the brow of HenryVIII., and with the other she points out to the moved heart the spot where, their dust mingled together, sleep within the walls of her most ancient fortress the victims of the fury of this king. For she also, that first cause of so many woes—the young Anne Boleyn, so proud of her fatal beauty—passed from the throne to the scaffold at the very moment when Catherine was dying of misery, pain, and neglect in the depths of an obscure city. The odious Cromwell, who had guided her to that scaffold, was not long in following her, and his ignoble blood was at last brought to expiate in the same place that of the illustrious More.*   *   *   *   *Such, reader, is the recital which as a faithful historian I resolved to set before you. A book is a thought. Mine has been written to emphasize a truth in our days too often forgotten—which is, that religion alone can lead men to happiness and perfection; that, being the most perfect law which it is possible to conceive of or attain, it is to her alone we should attach ourselves, and it is by her alone the state will see reared in its midst wise and just rulers or noble and generous citizens; that all, in fine, will see wisdom, science, order, and prosperity flourish.Princesse de Craon.THE END.[143]The learned Erasmus was then at the height of his brilliant fame. After numerous visits to England, where he had formed an intimate friendship with Thomas More, he fixed his residence at Bâle, in Switzerland. Admired by all the princes of his time, by all his learned contemporaries and a crowd of illustrious men, he contributed by his powerful writings to restrain Germany from barbarism.[144]This fact is related by an English historian, who has written the life of the Bishop of Rochester. The same author adds that Anne Boleyn, in giving the blow, cut her finger against one of the teeth which the axe had broken; that there came a sore on the finger; that they had the greatest difficulty in getting it healed, and she carried the scar until her death.

A HISTORICAL ROMANCE

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

Whenthe great city lay buried in that obscurity which the mantle of night had thrown over all, and while she seemed to sleep, resting on her bed of earth, by the banks of the river that flowed for ever with a measured sound—when she seemed to sleep at last, although neither the scholar, nor the afflicted, nor the criminal whom she enclosed in her bosom could have extinguished in the depths of their being the fire of intelligence which consumed them—there was to be seen a silent and fugitive figure gliding along by the walls of the Tower, upon which a noble and slender form was reflected. The light footfall made no sound, the sighs of her heart were stifled, and the folds of her veil hung motionless. She seated herself on the stone threshold of the awful gate, and for a long time wept in silence.

“Naught!” she said. “Not a sound to be heard. These walls are like the hearts of the judges. Children weep,” she said again. “What are tears but weakness and water? Not a gleam! It seems they have here neither fire nor life. What is this that consumes my heart? Weep, women! weep in your silken robes, under your downy coverings! As for me, it is the night wind dries my tears, and the damp earth drinks them up! When wilt thou cease to weep, and when will the heart of Margaret feel revived?… But why be astonished to feel it tremble? Has it not been broken like a preciousvase which can never more be mended?

“‘Come, Margaret, white Margaret!’ they used to say when you trod on the grass of the fields, Come, death, or yet a moment of life.”

And the young girl, standing on tiptoe, with strong arm and powerful effort, raised the heavy bronze griffin, which fell resounding upon the brass of the doors, and then she started, for at times she was a woman.

But there was no response; and when the sound of the iron had ceased to vibrate, and, it seemed to her, had exhausted itself in the air, nothing was heard but the monotonous dashing of the waves which came to die at the foot of the wall; and nothing more disturbed the silence of the night.

“Deaf as the pity in their souls!” she said after some moments.

And this time she knocked without flinching; for already Margaret had recovered from her fears. But a long and mournful silence continued to reign.

Whilst she was trying so ineffectually to reach her father, Sir Thomas re-entered the Tower, exhausted by fatigue. He had been confined in a still more gloomy and narrow cell. A miserable lamp, high placed, dimly lighted the obscurity. He was seated in a corner, and, alone at least, he went over in his mind the agonies he had enduredin that fatal journey. “Where is my daughter now?” he said to himself. “Alas! I saw her but an instant going out from before the judges. She will have seen that axe turned toward me. She will have said to herself there is no more hope; that I was branded with the seal of the condemned; that what she had heard was indeed true. If only she had returned to Chelsea! For they will not permit me to linger: Cromwell’s eyes gleamed with a ferocious light. Yet what have I done to this man to make him hate me so intensely? My God, permit me not to be betrayed into an emotion of hatred against” (Sir Thomas hesitated)—“against my brother,” he continued with courage; “for, after all, he is a man like myself, formed in the same mould, animated by the same intelligence; and it is better to be persecuted than to be the persecutor. Pardon him, then, O my God! Let your mercy be extended toward him, surround him on all sides, and never remember against him the evil he has wrought on me.”

While reflecting thus Sir Thomas suddenly heard a slight noise. He paused, and, seized with inexpressible anxiety, listened almost without breathing.

“It was in such manner he walked! It is he! It is Rochester!” he cried. “But no, I am mistaken; that cannot be,” he said, casting his eyes around him. “They have changed my cell; alas! I could not hear him even should he be there. It is an error of my troubled imagination.”

But the noise increased, and Sir Thomas soon heard them opening the doors which led to his cell. Some one was approaching.

“Again!” he said. “They will not, then, allow me a moment ofrepose.” And he saw Sir Thomas Pope coming in, bearing a roll of paper in his right hand.

Pope approached More and presented the paper.

Sir Thomas calmly took it from his hands, and, looking at Pope, said: “What! Master Pope, the king has already signed the death-warrant?” Glancing over the paper, he saw that his execution was set down for the next morning at nine o’clock.

“The king, in his ineffable clemency,” said Pope with an air of constraint, “commutes your punishment to that of decapitation.”

“I am much beholden to his majesty,” said Sir Thomas. “Still, good Master Pope, I hope that my children and my friends may never have need of any such favor.”

More smiled at first; then he regarded Pope with an expression of indefinable melancholy, and was silent.

“It is true—it is too true,” stammered Pope, “that this is not a great favor. But permit me, Sir Thomas, to avow to you that your conduct appears to me so strangely obstinate that I cannot explain it, and that you yourself seem to have had the wish to irritate the king against you to the last degree. Thus, you abandon your family, you leave your home, you lose your head, and all rather than take an oath to which our bishops have readily consented.”

“Yes, consented, and not wished to take,” replied Sir Thomas, “partly through fear, partly through surprise. They have taken it, you say; but I fear that they may be already repenting it. Good Master Pope, if you live you will surely see many strange events taking place in our unhappy country. In separating herself, in spite of the law of God,from the Church of Rome, you will see England change her face; intestine wars will rend her; the blood of her children will flow in every direction for centuries, perchance. Who can foretell whither the path of error will lead us when once we have taken the first step? Doubtless we are still Christians; but Christians who, separated from the mother that gave them birth, will soon have lost the revivifying spirit they have received from her. The Catholic faith, I know, cannot perish from the earth; but it can depart from one country into another. If, in three hundred years from now, we were permitted to return, you and I, to this world, we should find the faith, as to-day, pure from all error, one, and resting upon the indivisible truth, yet submitting to that supreme Head, to this key ofSt.Peter, which indeed some mortal men shall have carried a moment in their hands, and which is so violently attacked to-day. But my country, this land that I love—for it holds the ashes of my father—what is it destined to undergo? The incoherence and diversity of human opinions; the violence, the absurdities of the passions which shall have dictated them. Divided into a thousand sects, a thousand clashing opinions, you will not find a single family, perhaps, where they are united in one common faith, in the same hope and the same charity! And this divine Word, the Sacred Scriptures, which we have received from our fathers, abandoned to the ignorance and the pride of a pretended liberty, will have, perhaps, become only the source of horrible crimes and frightful cruelties, in place of being the foundation of all good and of every virtue!”

“Verily, Sir Thomas,” said Pope,“you frighten me! How can it hap that the ruin and disasters you have described should be in store for us? No, no, I do not believe it; because it is then you would see us all bound up around the centre of unity which they think to destroy to-day by a word!—expressions of a spiritual power which the prince may not, in fact, exercise.”

“He may not, as you say,” replied Sir Thomas; “but he will exercise it nevertheless, and at least I shall not have to reproach myself with having contributed to it. Oh! no,” he continued, “no; and I am happy to shed my blood in testimony of this truth. For listen, Master Pope: I have not sacrificed twenty years of my life in the service of the state without having studied what were her true interests, and consequently those of society, which is at the same time her foundation and support; and I declare to you that I have recognized and am thoroughly convinced that the Catholic religion, the realization of the figurative and prophetic law given to the Jews, the development and complete perfection of the natural law, can alone be the foundation of a prosperous and happy society, because it alone possesses the highest degree of morals possible to attain; it alone bears fruit in the heart; it alone can restrain, and is able even to destroy, that selfishness, natural to man, which leads him to sacrifice everything to his desires and gratifications—a selfishness which, abandoned to itself and carried to its greatest length, renders all social order impossible, and transforms men into a crowd of enraged enemies bent on mutual destruction.

“All that tends to disrupt, then, all that would alter or attack, this excellent religion, is a mortal blowaimed at the country and its citizens, and necessarily tends to deprive them of that which ensures their dignity, their safety, their happiness, their hopes, and their future. Look around you at the universe, and behold on its surface the people of those unhappy countries where the light of the Catholic faith has been extinguished or has not yet been kindled. Study their governments, and behold in them the most monstrous despotisms, where blood flows like water, and the life of man is considered of less value than that of the frivolous animal which amuses him. Read the cruel laws their ferocity has dictated; learn the still more crying acts of injustice they commit, and how they pursue, as with a tearing lash, those whose weakness and stupidity have delivered them up as slaves; tremble at the recital of the tortures and barbarities they inflict before death, to which they condemn their victims without appeal as without investigation; behold the arts, spiritual affection, sublime poesy, perish there; ignorance, instability, misery, and terror succeed them, and reign without interruption and without restraint. Ah! these noble ideas of right, of justice, of order and humanity, which govern us, and ensure among us the triumph of the incredulous and proud philosopher, which makes him say and think that they alone are sufficient for society—he perceives not, blind as he is, that these are prizes in the hand of religion, who, extends them to him, and that, if he speaks like her, she speaks still better than he. I do not say—no, I do not say—that we will fall as low as the Turk, the Indian, or the American savage. So long as one glimmer of the Gospel, one souvenir of its maxims, shall remain standing in the midstof us, we will not lose all that we have received since our ancestors came out of the forests where they wandered, subsisting on the flesh of wild animals; but we will begin to recede from the truth, we will cover it with clouds; they will become darker and darker, and soon, if we still go on, it will be no longer with a firm and resolute step, but rather like gloomy travellers wandering in a vast desert without a breath of air or a drop of water.”

Pope listened to Sir Thomas without daring to interrupt him, and felt his heart touched by what he said. For this admirable man possessed the faculty of attracting all who saw him immediately toward him; and when they heard him speak, the strength, the justness of his thoughts and his arguments penetrated little by little into their minds, until, almost without perceiving it, they found themselves entirely changed, and astonished to feel that they were of the same opinion as himself.

Pope leaned against a stool which was there, and remained very thoughtful; for he had taken the oath himself, without dreaming that it could result in such serious consequences. Neither his convictions, however, nor his courage were such as would make him desire to give his life for the truth; but he could not refrain from admiring this devotion in the illustrious man before him. He looked at him without speaking, and seemed entirely confounded.

Mistaking the cause, and seeing him abstracted and silent, Sir Thomas supposed the conversation had wearied Pope; he therefore ceased speaking, and, taking up the death-warrant, he read it a second time. At the end his eyes filled with tears and his sight grew dim.

“It is, then, fixed for to-morrow!” he exclaimed—“to-morrow morning. One night only! Oh! how I wish they would permit me to write to Erasmus.[143]Pope,” said he, “shall I not be permitted to see once more, for the last time, my dearly-beloved daughter? I fear that she may be still in the city. I would like her to be sent away—that Roper should take her. Ah! Master Pope, it is not the riches or honors of this world which are difficult to sacrifice, but the affections of the heart, of the soul that lives within us, which is entirely ourselves, without which the rest is nothing.” And he again relapsed into silence.

“I do not think you will be able to see her,” said Pope, replying to the question of Sir Thomas; “and—even—” he added with painful hesitation, “I am also charged to ask you not to make any remarks to the people on the scaffold. The king hath expressly so willed, and then he will permit your wife and children to assist at your interment.”

“Ah!” replied Sir Thomas, “I thank his majesty for manifesting so much solicitude about my poor interment; but it matters little where these miserable bones be laid when I have abandoned them. God, who has made them out of nothing, will be able to find the ashes and recall them a second time into being when it shall please him to restore them to that indestructible life which he has so graciously vouchsafed to promise them.”

“You wish to speak, then?” answered Pope. “Nevertheless, I believeit would be better not to anger the king more.”

“No, no!” replied Sir Thomas, “my dear Master Pope, you are mistaken. Since the king desires it, I will not speak. Most certainly I intended doing so; but since he forbids it, I will forbear. If they refuse me permission to see my daughter,” replied Sir Thomas, “I hope, at least, I may be able to see the Bishop of Rochester; since he has taken the oath, they will not fear.”

“Taken the oath!” cried Pope. “Why, he has been executed; he died to-day!”

“He died to-day!” repeated Sir Thomas. “My friend died to-day! O Cromwell! May God, whose power is infinite, hear my voice, grant my requests: may the same dangers unite us, that, following close in thy footsteps, my last sigh may be breathed with thine!”

And More, plunged in the deepest grief, slowly repeated the memorable words, the solemn words, which the holy bishop had pronounced in presence of the Lord and of his friend during the vigil ofSt.Thomas, when they were alone together in his home at Chelsea.

“Rochester would not take the oath, then!” continued More in a stifled voice, clasping his hands and elevating them toward heaven.

“Alas! no,” replied Pope.

“Cromwell told me he had.”

“He lied,” answered Pope, and his eyes filled with tears.

“He would not swear?”

“Never!”

“Pope,” said More, “I beg you to let me write to Erasmus. To-morrow I shall be no more! You are the last living man to whom I shall be able to speak.”

“Ah! Sir Thomas,” cried Popeuneasily, “if that letter were seized, what would become of me?”

“Let me write a few words on this leaf,” replied Sir Thomas, looking at a leaf of white paper belonging to the book which contained his condemnation—“a word on this leaf,” he continued. “Pope, you can cut it off and send it later when there will be no danger for you. Nay, good Pope, grant me this favor,” he added. “I have neither pen nor ink; but I have here a piece of charcoal, which I have already tried to sharpen.”

“Ah! Sir Thomas,” replied Pope, “I have not the heart to refuse you; however, I shall have cause, perhaps, to repent it.”

“No! no!” cried Sir Thomas. “If you cannot send him this last farewell without being afraid, you can burn it.”

“Write, then; I consent,” said Pope; and he handed the death-warrant to Sir Thomas, who had returned it to him.

More seized it, and wrote the following words:

“Erasmus! O Erasmus! my friend, this is the last time I shall have the happiness of pronouncing your name. An entire life, O my friend! is passed; it has glided by in a moment. Behold one about to end like a day that is closed. I have loved you as long as I have had breath; as long as I have felt my heart throb in my bosom the name of Erasmus has reigned there. Alas! I have so many things to say to you. Though the words die on my lips, your heart alone will be able to comprehend mine. May it enter; may it hear in my soul all that More has wished to say to Erasmus!

“When you receive this page, I shall be no more; it is still attached to the writ which contains my sentence of death. Erasmus, I am going to leave Margaret. I abandon my children! Our friend Pierre Gilles is here. I saw him for a moment—the moment when they were pronouncing sentence on me. Without doubt, to-morrow morning, Ishall see him at the foot of the scaffold. I shall be kept at a distance from him; I shall not be able to say a single word to him. My eyes will be directed toward him, my hand will be stretched out; but my heart will not be permitted to speak to him! O Erasmus! how I suffer. And Margaret—O my friend! if you had seen her, how pale she was, what anguish was painted on all her features. I could wish that she loved me less: she would not suffer so much in seeing me die. Erasmus, not one minute! Time is short; the hour approaches. Oh! when I could write those long letters so peaceably, when science alone and the good of humanity occupied us both; when I saw those letters despatched so quietly to go in search of you, and said to myself: ‘In so many days I shall receive his reply!’… No more replies, Erasmus! If ever you come to England, you will ask in what corner they have thrown my ashes. Oh! what would become of me if I were not a Christian? What happiness to feel our faith rising up from the depths of wretchedness, to hear all our groans and lamentions, and to answer them! I die a Christian! I die for this faith so pure and beautiful! for that faith which is the happiness and glory of the human race. At this thought I feel myself reanimated; new strength inspires my heart; hope inundates my soul. I shall see you all again. Yes, one day—one day after a long absence—I shall clasp you once more to my bosom in the presence of God himself. I shall see again my daughter! We will find ourselves invested with our same bodies. ‘I shall see my God,’ said Job; ‘for I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that I shall rise again at the last day; I will go out of this world into that which I am about to enter, and then I shall see my God. It will be I who shall see him, and not another.’

“Erasmus, to live for ever, to love for ever! Farewell.

“Your brother, your friend,

“Thomas More.”

The charcoal began to crumble in his hands. He was scarcely able to trace the last words. He pressed his lips on them and returned the book to Pope.

Meanwhile, Margaret, tired ofknocking, and losing all hope of reaching her father, was seated upon the stone step before the door of the prison, and, being wrapped in her veil, she remained motionless and mute, like a statue of stone whose head, bowed upon its garments, is the personification of sorrow and silence.

Thus she sat absorbed in thought, and the burning tears had bathed her hands and ran down on her knees, when the footstep of a man who was approaching from the quay aroused her from her reverie. Alarmed, she arose abruptly, and, placing her hand upon a long and sharp dagger she had attached to her side, she stood awaiting the intruder; but she recognized Roper.

“Margaret,” he exclaimed, “what are you doing there?” And he spoke these few words to her in a melancholy tone of voice more expressive of pain than reproach; because he sought her, knowing well where he would find her.

“It is you, Roper,” said the young girl, and she resumed her seat as before. William Roper then came and seated himself by her side; taking her cold and wet hand, he pressed it to his lips with an inexpressible oppression of heart. “O Margaret!” he said at last with a deep sigh, “why stay you here?”

“To see him again to-morrow—yes, to-morrow! But tell me, Roper, why I feel so weak; why my blood runs so cold in my veins; why I no longer have either strength or energy; why, in fact, I feel myself dying, without being able to cease to exist! O William! look at that dark river in front of us, and that black hill lifting its head beyond. Well! when the sky begins to grow white on that side, that will be the light of to-morrow which will dawn; that will be the hour of the executionapproaching; and then you will see the eager crowd come pressing around the boards of the scaffold, come to feast on the cruelty of the misfortune it applauds, to enjoy the death its stupidity has not ordered. You will see them decked out in their ribbons, while the bells of the city will ring for the feast—the great feast ofSt.Thomas; for that is to-morrow, and to-morrow they will come to see my father die. Then all that I love will be torn from me, and nothing more will remain to me on earth. Oh! how happy are the strong: they break or perish. Roper, speak to me of Rochester. I loved him also, that venerable man. No, do not speak of him. Hush! I know all; I have seen everything. They dragged him to the scaffold; he prayed for them while holding his feeble, attenuated neck upon the fatal block; and, detached from the earth, his soul continued in heaven the canticle it had commenced in this world.”

“Alas! yes,” said Roper. “They had to carry him to the scaffold on a chair, because he was no longer able to sustain himself.”

“Ah! Roper,” cried Margaret, “behold the fatal light! Here is the day!” And she fell, almost deprived of consciousness.

“No, Margaret, no; the hour strikes, but it strikes only the small hours of the night. It is not yet day, my beloved—it is not day!”

“Oh! how cold I am,” said the young girl, shaking the veil which enveloped her, all humid with the dews of night. “Roper, is there no more hope, then? Do you believe it? Do you believe there is no more hope—that to-morrow I will see my father die?”

“Alas!” said Roper, “Pierre Gilles has gone to seek the queen and throw himself at her feet.”

“Say not the queen!” cried Margaret. “Give not the name of queen to that woman!”

“At least, so they call her,” said Roper. “She is all-powerful; if she would only ask his pardon! But they press her so much! But, no, she will not do it, Margaret; she is a hyena covered with a beautiful skin. She managed to procure the head of Rochester, and with her foul hand dealt it an infamous blow.[144]Ah! Margaret, I have done wrong in speaking to you thus.” And Roper was silent, regretting the words that indignation had forced him to utter.

“She struck it!” cried Margaret. “She recoiled not before those white locks dripping with the blood her crimes caused to flow! William, I shudder at it! Oh! can you believe it? The only time that I have seen my father he spoke to me of her with tears in his eyes; he said that he prayed God to raise her soul from out the miserable depths into which she had fallen. Roper, look!—there is day!”

“No, Margaret, no!”

“But it will come! Ah! how the hours fly, and yet I would be willing.… No! no! nothing. William, I feel as though I were dying! Yet I would wish to see him again—again once more!”

Roper took the hand of his affianced. It was burning; the irregular and rapid throbbing of her veins betokened the agony that her soul endured.

“Well,” she continued after a moment’s silence, “speak, then—speakto me of Rochester; tell me how the saints die.”

“Margaret, I can talk no more; I feel so crushed by the excess of these afflictions that I have not even dared to glance at them.”

“Yes, you were deaf and blind; you always will be, and for a long time I have been telling you so. It is a long time, also, since I saw all, since I felt this horrible hour coming on, since I measured the weakness of my hands and curbed the strength of my mind. It is long since I knew that I must remain alone in this world; for this life will not depart from my breast, and without crime I cannot tear it away! I must live, and live deprived of everything. Do you see this weapon, Roper?” And Margaret drew the poignard, the blade of which flashed. “Were I not the daughter of More; feared I not the Lord; if his law, like a seal of brass, had not engraven his commandments on my lips and in my heart, you should see if I would not deliver my father—if Cromwell, if Henry, struck down suddenly by the arm and the hatred of a woman, would not have already, while rolling in the dust and pronouncing my name, cried to the universe that cursed was the day when they had resolved to assassinate my father! In giving my life I became mistress of theirs! Ah! where would they be to-day—this brave king, this powerful favorite? A little infected dust, from which the drunken grave-digger would instinctively turn away! But, William, raise your eyes; look at those numberless stars that gleam so brightly above our heads! The word of Him who has suspended them thus in the immensity of the heavens humbles my spirit, enchains my will. He ordains, I am silent;he speaks, I obey. Impotent by his prohibition alone, I can die, but not resist him.”

And Margaret, pressing her lips upon the blade of the threatening weapon, cried: “Yes, I love thee because thou art able to defend or avenge me; and if thy tempered blade remains useless in my hands, say that it is God himself who has ordered it. Let them render thanks, then, to that God whom they provoke and despise; let them return thanks to him; for neither their guards nor their pride, their crimes nor their gold, could have prevented Margaret from sweeping them from the earth which they pollute, and breaking their audacious power like a wisp of straw that is given to the winds!”

She turned toward Roper, transported by courage and grief. But she saw that he was not listening, and that, entirely crushed by the misery he experienced, he had not sufficient energy in his soul to try to resist it.

“He is already resigned!” she said. An expression of scorn and disgust contracted the features of the young girl; she abruptly withdrew the hand he held in his own; moving away from him, she went and seated herself farther off, and, remaining with her eyes fixed upon the east, awaited the moment of harrowing joy which, while restoring her father to her, would tear him away from her for ever.

As the hours slowly tolled, each one awaking a dolorous echo in her heart—when at last she saw the first rays of morning stealing over the heavens, and the rosy tint which precedes the flame of Aurora—she turned again toward Roper; but, happy mortal! his heavy eyelids had lulled his afflicted soul to sleep. As a reaper reposes sweetly in a fieldcovered with rich grain, so Roper slept peacefully with his head resting against the walls of a prison.

Margaret arose instantly, and, seized with indignation, she advanced toward him, and, with her hands clasped, stood regarding him. “He sleeps!” she said—“he sleeps! Truly, man is a noble being, full of courage, of energy, of impassibility, of strength of mind. It is thus that they accomplish such great things! Dear Roper, you belong to this mass of men which crowds us in on every side, absorbing and devouring our lives! You are their brother, their friend; like them, during the day, you love that which laughs, that which sings, and you sleep during the night. Well! I will laugh with you, with them. Are you worthy of beholding me weep? No; my father alone shall have my last tears, and carry with him the secret of my soul.”

And Margaret, seizing the hand of Roper, shook it violently. He awoke, startled.

“It is day!” he said. “Ah! it is day! Margaret—eh! you are weeping.”

“No, I am not weeping,” replied the young girl. “I have slept also, slept very well—and I am comforted!”

“Comforted! What do you mean? Has Pierre Gilles obtained his pardon? Have they granted his freedom?”

“Yes, they have granted his freedom—from life. In a word, they will shorten it, they will drag him from the midst of you. Is that a misfortune or a benefit, an injury or a favor? This is what I cannot decide. But as for me, I remain here!”

“Margaret,” cried Roper, “what is wrong with you?” And he gazed at her, astonished at the cuttingirony and the bitter despair expressed in the tone of her voice and imprinted on her features. “I no longer recognize you.”

“Yes, I am changed, Roper. Henceforth you shall be my only model. Who is that young woman dressed in gauze, crowned with flowers, whom the light and rapid dance carries far from the banquet and the cups filled with fragrant cordials—who casts far away from her the memory of her father, and has forgotten the grave of her mother? That is the wife of William, Margaret Roper. No, I do not want that name. Go, keep it; give it to some one who resembles yourself, to whom you may bear presents, and who, on hearing you say it, will believe that one can be happy—yes, will believe that it is possible to be happy!”

“Margaret,” said Roper, more and more surprised, “I cannot comprehend what you would say.”

“Nor do I any more,” replied the young girl, wiping her forehead; for she was warm. “But do you understand at least, Roper, that the city is awake, that they are preparing the scaffold down below, that the soldiers are astir within, that I hear the clanking of their arms, that we are very soon going to see my father pass? Tell me, Roper, how do you contrive to become so unfeeling, to love nothing, to regret nothing? Have you a secret for this? Give it to me—give me that which makes one neither feel nor speak; that one can sleep beside the axe and the prison, when within the prison lies a father whom they are about to immolate!”

And she fixed her piercing eyes on him.

“Ah! Margaret. Yes, I have slept, I have done wrong; but fatigue overcame me. It seemed to me Isaw him; I dreamed that I had rescued him.”

“Yes, your dreams are always happy; but look, Roper, here is the reality.”

Margaret withdrew to one side under the walls of the Tower; for the door of the fortress was opened, and they saw a troop of soldiers, fully armed, preparing to march out.

“Tower Hill!” cried their commander; and they filed out in great numbers. Others succeeded them; they arranged themselves in two columns, which extended from the gate of the lower to the place of execution, still dyed with the blood of Rochester.

Meanwhile, the rumor spread abroad rapidly that they had sent for the two sheriffs; that Sir Thomas More, former lord chancellor, was going to be executed; and from all directions crowds of people rushed precipitately—some remembering the lofty position the condemned had occupied; the greater number, without thinking of anything (coming to see the criminal as they would come to see any other), impelled by instinct, habit, or want of occupation, arrived without aim, as without reflection.

Who can paint the anguish of Margaret when she felt herself surrounded, jostled, elbowed, by this turbulent throng, crowding and shouting, which pushed her up against the prison walls, threatening to carry her forcibly from the inch of ground which she had held all night; and more still by this ignoble mob of malefactors, vagabonds, of adventurers of all kinds, who came in those days of murder to learn in the public square what their own end would be, and to behold the funeral couch society had destined for them on the day they should fail in audacity or skill.Who can describe, express, or feel the shame that overwhelmed her soul in spite of her reason, and suffused her pure brow with the blush of ignominy, when she heard them pronounce the name of her father, howling and clapping their hands because the criminal was slow in appearing and the tragedy they awaited did not begin? Her weary eyes sought Pierre Gilles in this tumult, and he was not there. He, at least, would have understood Margaret. She was unable to explain his absence; he had no more hope—unless the queen had detained him. But he must know that the execution was near, that the hour had arrived. And if he had obtained it, and should this pardon arrive too late! A thousand times Margaret, rendered desperate, was on the point of addressing the fickle crowd surrounding her. She wanted to say to them: “I am his daughter! Oh! save my father. He who sacrificed his life, his comforts, his happiness, to govern you wisely, to render you full justice, to reconcile your families, is going to perish unjustly!” But her anxious gaze fell only on faces coarse, stupid, indolent, impassible, or vicious. Then she felt the words die on her lips, while courage and hope expired in her heart.

The hours glide away in these mortal agonies; for they pass as rapidly in the excess of sorrow as during the intoxicating seasons of joy and happiness. Presently Margaret heard a confused noise arise. The masses moved; the soldiers drew up closer, brandishing their arms—they were afraid of being overwhelmed. The crowds climbed on everything they could find: the quay, the carts, carriages, steps—they took possession of all, made ladders of everything. Margaretis drawn into this frightful whirlpool; she struggles in vain, trying to make room and to stand firm. A loud clamor arose, re-echoed, increased, was reproduced in the distance. “He comes! he comes!” they cried on all sides. “How pale he is! That is he! that is Sir Thomas More, the old lord chancellor! Oh! how poor he looks. He walks with difficulty; he leans on a stick; he has a cross of red wood in his hand; he bows on each side of him. There are the sheriffs walking behind him. There is a tall black man who follows them. Do you see the lieutenant of the Tower? He is there also. Hush! he makes a sign with his hand. He smiles! How fast they carry him along! One has not time to see him. Are they afraid, then, that we will take him away by force? Eh! no person thinks of that. He has done something very bad, they say. We believed him so good! Ah! here is somebody stopping him. Look! look! He speaks! he speaks! Yes, he speaks!” For Margaret, reduced to despair, animated by a superhuman strength, has broken through the ranks, passed through the guards. She throws herself on the neck of More; she sees him, she embraces him, she clasps him to her throbbing, palpitating bosom.

“My daughter! my daughter!” said More, pressing her to his heart; “oh! what anguish to see you here.”

And his cheeks, pale and furrowed by suffering, were wet with tears that brought no relief to his soul.

At this spectacle the guards themselves were moved. “That is his daughter, his poor daughter!” they exclaimed on all sides; and by a unanimous movement of respect and compassion they stepped aside,forming a circle around him, while the tears flowed from all eyes.

“How beautiful she is!” said the men. “How young she is!” exclaimed the women.

“My father! my beloved father!” cried Margaret, shuddering, “beg of God that I may not survive you; that I also may soon leave this world when you abandon it! O my father! bless me again, and swear to me that you will ask God to let me die also.”

She threw herself on her knees without letting go his hands, which she bathed with a torrent of tears and pressed against her face as though without power to release them.

“Dearly beloved daughter!” said More, resting his hand upon her long, dishevelled locks, “oh! yes, may the Lord bless you as I love and bless you myself. You have been a sacred charge, a treasure of joy and happiness which he has given me; I return it to him! He is your first Father—he will never abandon you; and one day—a day not far distant, for the life of man is but a breath that passes in a moment—we shall be reunited, to be no more separated, in a blessed eternity! Margaret, since I have had the happiness of seeing you before I die, take my blessing to your brothers and your sisters; tell them, and also all my good friends, to pray the Lord for me! You know them? O Margaret! let Pierre Gilles learn from you how much I have loved him; how deeply I am touched, and grateful for this voyage he made, I doubt not for me alone. Alas! if I feel a regret in dying, it is because of not being able to tell him this myself. Why is he not with you? But I perceive Roper, my beloved daughter; give him also a thousand blessings. You know that Ihave regarded him for a long time as my son; love him as you have loved myself, and let your tears flow not without consolation, because, since it pleases God to permit me to die to-day, I am perfectly resigned to his will, and I would wish nothing changed.” And Sir Thomas, bending over her, clasped her closely to his heart.

“Let me follow you!” she gasped in a low voice; for she was no longer able to speak.

“Margaret, you give me pain.”

“I would follow you,” she said in still more stifled tones.

“Ah! Kingston,” exclaimed More (and the perspiration poured from his forehead), “my good friend, assist me in placing her in the hands of her husband.”

“I will do it,” cried a bellowing voice well known to Sir Thomas.

“Master Roper, come and take your wife away.” And they saw the hideous face of Cromwell pass, who surveyed those who accompanied the condemned.

In the meantime William Roper had succeeded in pushing his way through the crowd; he took the hand of More, and kissed it, weeping.

“Take her, my son,” said More, entirely occupied with Margaret. “I confide her to you, I give her to you; be her support, her friend, her defender!” And he turned to resume his march.

Margaret, observing this movement, again endeavored to rush toward him; but the crowd hurried on, the guards closed around, and she found herself separated from her father.

He cast upon her a last look, which he carried to the skies. She uttered a piercing cry; but already he had moved on and far away.

She rushed forward, endeavoringagain to break through the crowd; but curiosity had made them form like a rampart, growing every instant around her.

She heard the commands of the military authorities; already she could not see beyond the group that surrounded her; then she almost lost the use of reason. “Save my father! save him!” she cried, extending her suppliant hands toward those who environed her, whose sympathies were diversely excited according to their different characters.

“Why have they brought this young woman to this place?” said the good ones. “His daughter, his poor daughter!” murmured the more compassionate. “She looks like a lunatic!” replied the others. “She will die from this; it will kill her. It is most cruel! If the king had only granted his pardon! He might have done it.”

“Yes, pardon, pardon!” repeated Margaret, frenzied and wandering. “They have granted his pardon, I assure you. Pierre Gilles has been to Hampton Court to find that woman. Roper, is it not so? Roper, I am dying; take me away.” And she grew pale and seemed ready to faint. Three or four hands were immediately advanced to sustain her; but Roper would not suffer them to touch her, and, raising her in his arms, he asked them to make way for him to lead her out of the crowd and from the place. The crowd opened with respect, and he assisted Margaret to the same place where she had passed the night awaiting, with her eyes fixed on the horizon, the terrible day which was to remove her for ever from her father.

“It is daylight, daylight,” said Margaret. “Yonder, Roper! And when night comes on, he will bealready cold in death! O Roper! all this in one day. William, give him back to me! What have they done with him? Oh! no, he will not die. He is going to the king!”

She kept her eyes fast closed, and poor Roper regarded her with anxiety.

“They have forced him away! You know the place where the soldiers have taken him. I have seen it—I have seen everything. But that was yesterday, Roper. I have lost my reason,” she suddenly exclaimed, opening her eyes, filled with terror. “Tell me, where is he? They will let me bury his body, will they not? I will kiss his face, I will embalm him; and you will bury me beside him, will you not, Roper? They will not leave it on the bridge—that head; I will remain on my knees until they give it to me! O Heaven! dost thou hear—dost thou hear the cries of the people? All is ended; the crime is consummated! My father has left the earth! Roper, let us go to the church; I want to pray—to pray until eternity!”

Alas! Margaret spoke truly. Arriving at the scaffold, More, after having embraced the executioner and given him a gold angel in token of forgiveness, was beheaded by the same axe, upon the very block on which the head of his friend Rochester had fallen a few hours before.

Thus perished these two illustrious men, the glory and honor of England. Thus began the cruel schism which since then has torn so many children from the church, separated a great number of Christians from the common trunk, and deprived, in the course of centuries, so many souls of the knowledge of the eternal and indivisible truth.

And now, when old England unrolls before the eyes of the eagerexplorer of the past the long list of her kings, she places one of her fingers upon the bloody diadem which encircles the brow of HenryVIII., and with the other she points out to the moved heart the spot where, their dust mingled together, sleep within the walls of her most ancient fortress the victims of the fury of this king. For she also, that first cause of so many woes—the young Anne Boleyn, so proud of her fatal beauty—passed from the throne to the scaffold at the very moment when Catherine was dying of misery, pain, and neglect in the depths of an obscure city. The odious Cromwell, who had guided her to that scaffold, was not long in following her, and his ignoble blood was at last brought to expiate in the same place that of the illustrious More.

*   *   *   *   *

Such, reader, is the recital which as a faithful historian I resolved to set before you. A book is a thought. Mine has been written to emphasize a truth in our days too often forgotten—which is, that religion alone can lead men to happiness and perfection; that, being the most perfect law which it is possible to conceive of or attain, it is to her alone we should attach ourselves, and it is by her alone the state will see reared in its midst wise and just rulers or noble and generous citizens; that all, in fine, will see wisdom, science, order, and prosperity flourish.

Princesse de Craon.

THE END.

[143]The learned Erasmus was then at the height of his brilliant fame. After numerous visits to England, where he had formed an intimate friendship with Thomas More, he fixed his residence at Bâle, in Switzerland. Admired by all the princes of his time, by all his learned contemporaries and a crowd of illustrious men, he contributed by his powerful writings to restrain Germany from barbarism.

[144]This fact is related by an English historian, who has written the life of the Bishop of Rochester. The same author adds that Anne Boleyn, in giving the blow, cut her finger against one of the teeth which the axe had broken; that there came a sore on the finger; that they had the greatest difficulty in getting it healed, and she carried the scar until her death.

Back to IndexNext