He used to say that the idea of one who was both Virgin and Mother had sunk so deep into the heart of humanity that there it must ever remain.

Wordsworth’s estimate of his contemporaries was not generally high. I remember his once saying to me: “I have known many that might be called very clever men, and a good many of real and vigorous abilities, but few of genius; and only one whom I should call ‘wonderful.’ That one was Coleridge. At any hour of the day or night he would talk by the hour, if there chanced to be any sympathetic listener, and talk better than the best page of his writings; for a pen half paralyzed his genius. A child would sit quietly at his feet and wonder, till the torrent had passed by. The only man like Coleridge whom I have known is Sir William Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Dublin.” I remember, however, that when I recited by his fireside Alfred Tennyson’s two political poems, “You ask me why, though ill at ease,” and “Of old sat Freedom on the heights,” the old bard listened with a deepening attention, and, when I had ended, said after a pause, “I must acknowledge that those two poems are very solid and noble in thought. Their diction also seems singularly stately.” He was a great admirer of Philip van Artevelde. In the case of a certain poet since dead, and little popular, he said to me: “I consider his sonnets to be certainly the best of modern times”; adding, “Of course I am not including my own in any comparison with those of others.” He was not sanguine as to the future of English poetry. He thought that there was much to be supplied in other departments of our literature, and especially he desired a really great history of England; but he was disposed to regard the roll of English poetry as made up, and as leaving place for little more except what was likely to be eccentric or imitational.

In his younger days Wordsworth had had to fight a great battle in poetry; for both his subjects and his mode of treating them were antagonistic to the maxims then current. It was fortunate for posterity, no doubt, that his long “militant estate” was animated by some mingling of personal ambition with his love of poetry. Speaking in an early sonnet of

he concludes:

He died at eighty, and general fame did not come to him till about fifteen years before his death. This might perhaps have been fifteen years too soon, if he had set any inordinate value on it. But it was not so. Shelley tells us that “Fame is love disguised”; and it was intellectual sympathy that Wordsworth had always valued far more than reputation. “Give me thy love; I claim no other fee,” had been his demand on his reader. When fame had laid her tardy garland at his feet, he found on it no fresher green than his “Rydalian laurels” had always worn. Once he said to me: “It is indeed a deep satisfaction to hope and believe that my poetry will be, while it lasts, a help to the cause of virtue and truth, especially among the young. As for myself, it seems now of little moment how long I may be remembered. When a man pushes off in his little boat into the great seas of Infinity and Eternity, it surely signifies little how long he is kept in sight by watchers from the shore.”

Such are my chief recollections of the great poet, whom I knew but in his old age, but whose heart retained its youth till his daughter Dora’s death. He seemed to me one who from boyhood had been faithful to a high vocation; one who had esteemed it his office to minister, in an age of conventional civilization, at nature’s altar, and who had in his later life explained and vindicated such lifelong ministration, even while he seemed to apologize for it, in the memorable confession,

It was to nature as first created, not to nature as corrupted by “disnatured” passions, that his song had attributed such high and healing powers. In singing her praise he had chosen a theme loftier than most of his readers knew—loftier, as he perhaps eventually discovered, than he had at first supposed it to be. Utterly without Shakspere’s dramatic faculty, he was richer and wider in the humanities than any poet since Shakspere. Wholly unlike Milton in character and in opinions, he abounds in passages to be paralleled only by Milton in solemn and spiritual sublimity, and not even by Milton in pathos. It was plain to those who knew Wordsworth that he had kept his great gift pure, and used it honestly and thoroughly for that purpose for which it had been bestowed. He had ever written with a conscientious reverence for that gift; but he had also written spontaneously. He had composed with care—not the exaggerated solicitude which is prompted by vanity, and which frets itself to unite incompatible excellences, but the diligence which shrinks from no toil while eradicating blemishes that confuse a poem’s meaning and frustrate its purpose. He regarded poetry as an art; but he also regarded art, not as the compeer of nature, much less her superior, but as her servant and interpreter. He wrote poetry likewise, no doubt, in a large measure, because self-utterance was an essential law of his nature. If he had a companion, he discoursed like one whose thoughts must needs run on in audible current; if he walked alone among his mountains, he murmured old songs. He was like a pine-grove, vocal as well as visible. But to poetry he had dedicated himself as to the utterance of the highest truths brought within the range of his life’s experience; and if his poetry has been accused of egotism, the charge has come from those who did not perceive that it was with a human, not a mere personal, interest that he habitually watched the processes of his own mind. He drew from the fountain that was nearest at hand what he hoped might be a refreshment to those far off. He once said, speaking of a departed man of genius, who had lived an unhappy life and deplorably abused his powers, to the lasting calamity of his country: “A great poet must be a great man; and a great man must be a good man; and a good man ought to be a happy man.” To know Wordsworth was to feel sure that if he had been a great poet, it was not merely because he had been endowed with a great imagination, but because he had been a good man, a great man, and a man whose poetry had, in an especial sense, been the expression of a healthily happy moral being.

P.S.—Wordsworth was by no means without humor. When the Queen, on one occasion, gave a masked ball, some one said that a certain youthful poet, who has since reached a deservedly high place both in the literary and political world, but who was then known chiefly as an accomplished and amusing young man of society, was to attend it dressed in the character of the father of English poetry—grave old Chaucer. “What!” said Wordsworth, “M—— go as Chaucer! Then it only remains for me to go as M——!”

PART II.

The above-written sonnet is the record of a delightful day spent by my father in 1833 with Wordsworth at Rydal, to which he went from the still more beautiful shores of Ulswater, where he had been sojourning at Halsteads. He had been one of Wordsworth’s warmest admirers when their number was small, and in 1842 he dedicated a volume of poems to him.[136] He taught me when a boy of eighteen years old to admire the great bard. I had been very enthusiastically praising Lord Byron’s poetry. My father calmly replied: “Wordsworth is the great poet of modern times.” Much surprised, I asked: “And what may his special merits be?” The answer was, “They are very various; as, for instance, depth, largeness, elevation, and, what is rare in modern poetry, an entire purity. In his noble ‘Laodamia’ they are chiefly majesty and pathos.” A few weeks afterwards I chanced to take from the library shelves a volume of Wordsworth, and it opened on “Laodamia.” Some strong, calm hand seemed to have been laid on my head, and bound me to the spot till I had come to the end. As I read, a new world, hitherto unimagined, opened itself out, stretching far away into serene infinitudes. The region was one to me unknown, but the harmony of the picture attested its reality. Above and around were indeed

and when I reached the line,

I felt that no tenants less stately could walk in so lordly a precinct. I had been translated into another planet of song—one with larger movements and a longer year. A wider conception of poetry had become mine, and the Byronian enthusiasm fell from me like a bond that is broken by being outgrown. The incident illustrates poetry in one of its many characters—that of the “deliverer.” The ready sympathies and inexperienced imagination of youth make it surrender itself easily despite its better aspirations, or in consequence of them, to a false greatness; and the true greatness, once revealed, sets it free. As early as 1824 Walter Savage Landor, in his “Imaginary Conversation” between Southey and Porson, had pronounced Wordsworth’s “Laodamia” to be “a composition such as Sophocles might have exulted to own, and a part of which might have been heard with shouts of rapture in the regions he describes”—the Elysian Fields.

Wordsworth frequently spoke of death, as if it were the taking of a new degree in the University of Life. “I should like,” he remarked to a young lady, “to visit Italy again before I move to another planet.” He sometimes made a mistake in assuming that others were equally philosophical. We were once breakfasting at the house of Mr. Rogers, when Wordsworth, after gazing attentively round the room with a benignant and complacent expression, turned to our host, and, wishing to compliment him, said: “Mr. Rogers, I never see this house, so perfect in its taste, so exquisite in all its arrangements, and decorated with such well-chosen pictures, without fancying it the very house imaged to himself by the Roman poet when, in illustration of man’s mortality, he says: ‘Linquenda est domus.’” “What is that you’re saying?” replied Mr. Rogers, whose years between eighty and ninety, had not improved his hearing. “I was remarking that your house,” replied Wordsworth, “always reminds me of the ode (more properly called an elegy, though doubtless the lyrical measure not unnaturally causes it to be included among Horace’s odes) in which the Roman poet writes: ‘Linquenda est domus’; that is, since, ladies being present, a translation may be deemed desirable, The house is, or has to be, left; and again,’et placens uxor’—and the pleasing wife; though, as we must all regret, that part of the quotation is not applicable on the present occasion.” The Town Bard, on whom “no angle smiled” more than the end of St. James’ Place, did not enter into the views of the Bard of the Mountains. His answer was what children call “making a great face,” and the ejaculation, “Don’t talk Latin in the society of ladies.” When I was going away, he remarked, “What a stimulus the mountain air has on the appetite! I made a sign to Edmund to hand him the cutlets a second time. I was afraid he would stick his fork into that beautiful woman who sat next him.” Wordsworth never resented a jest at his own expense. Once when we had knocked three times in vain at the door of a London house, I exclaimed, quoting his sonnet written on Westminster Bridge,

He laughed heartily, then smiled gravely, and lastly recounted the occasion and described the early morning on which that sonnet was written. He did not recite more than a part of it, to the accompaniment of distant cab and carriage; and I thought that the door was opened too soon.

Wordsworth, despite his dislike to great cities, was attracted occasionally in his later years

where his society was courted by persons of the most different character. But he complained bitterly of the great city. It was next to impossible, he remarked, to tell the truth in it. “Yesterday I was at S—— House; the Duchess of S——, showing me the pictures, observed: ‘This is the portrait of my brother’ (naming him), ‘and it is considered very like.’ To this I assented, partly perhaps in absence of mind, but partly, I think, with an impression that her grace’s brother was probably a person whose face every one knew or was expected to know; so that, as I had never met him, my answer was in fact a lie! It is too bad that, when more than seventy years old, I should be drawn from the mountains to London in order to tell a lie!” He made his complaint wherever he went, laying the blame, however, not so much on himself or on the duchess as on the corrupt city; and some of those who learned how the most truthful man in England had thus quickly been subverted by metropolitan snares came to the conclusion that within a few years more no virtue would be left extant in the land. He was likewise maltreated in lesser ways. “This morning I was compelled by my engagements to eat three breakfasts—one with an aged and excellent gentleman, who may justly be esteemed an accomplished man of letters, although I cannot honestly concede to him the title of a poet; one at a fashionable party; and one with an old friend whom no pressure would induce me to neglect, although for this, my first breakfast to-day, I was obliged to name the early hour of seven o’clock, as he lives in a remote part of London.”

But it was only among his own mountains that Wordsworth could be understood. He walked among them not so much to admire them as to converse with them. They exchanged thoughts with him, in sunshine or flying shadow, giving him their own and accepting his. Day and night, at all hours, and in all weathers, he would face them. If it rained, he might fling his plaid over him, but would take no admonition. He must have his way. On such occasions, dutiful as he was in higher matters, he remained incurably wayward. In vain one reminded him that a letter needed an answer or that the storm would soon be over. It was very necessary for him to do what he liked; and one of his dearest friends said to me, with a smile of the most affectionate humor: “He wrote his ‘Ode to Duty,’ and then he had done with that matter.” This very innocent form of lawlessness, corresponding with the classic expression, “Indulge genio,” seemed to belong to his genius, not less than the sympathetic reverence with which he looked up to the higher and universal laws. Sometimes there was a battle between his reverence for nature and his reverence for other things. The friend already alluded to was once remarking on his varying expressions of countenance: “That rough old face is capable of high and real beauty; I have seen in it an expression quite of heavenly peace and contemplative delight, as the May breeze came over him from the woods while he was slowly walking out of church on a Sunday morning, and when he had half emerged from the shadow.” A flippant person present inquired: “Did you ever chance, Miss F——, to observe that heavenly expression on his countenance as he was walking into church on a fine May morning?” A laugh was the reply. The ways of nature harmonized with his feelings in age as well as in youth. He could understand no estrangement. Gathering a wreath of white thorn on one occasion, he murmured, as he slipped it into the ribbon which bound the golden tresses of his youthful companion,

SIR THOMAS MORE.
A HISTORICAL ROMANCE.

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

III.

“Ah! well, and so you are going to carry the French birds back!” exclaimed the old keeper Jack, with a loud, coarse laugh, as he leaned against one of the century-old trees in Windsor forest. “Well, well, so be it, my friends; but give us a little drop to drink,” he added in a jocular but self-important tone. As he said these words, he familiarly slapped the shoulder of one of the falconers, who was engaged in fastening the chains again to the feet of the tiercelets, whilst his comrades cut off the heads of the game taken, and threw them as a reward to the cruel birds, who devoured them with avidity.

“After a while,” replied the falconer a little impatiently. “Wait till our work is done, father Jack; you are always in a hurry—to drink. We will take our glass together now directly. See that troop of birds! They must first be chained and put with the others.”

“Well, well!” replied Jack, “provided we lose nothing by waiting. These are beautiful birds, if they do come from France.”

“No, no, you shall lose nothing by waiting,” cried the second falconer. “Come here; I will let you taste a liquid that these birds have brought over under their wings, and we will see then if you have ever drunk anything equal to it since you drew on your boots in the service of his majesty.”

And he poured out of a canteen that hung from his shoulder-belt a very acid gin, filling, until it foamed over, a large pewter cup, which he handed to father Jack.

It was swallowed at one draught.

“Oh! superb, superb!” cried the old keeper, returning the cup and smacking his lips. “During the five-and-forty years past that I have had the honor of keeping Windsor, I have drunk nothing better. Let’s go! That strengthens a man’s courage and warms up his old blood! I believe the deer will give us a hard drive to-day; I have seen the tracks of fourteen or fifteen at least.” And saying this, he remounted his old wind-broken mare.

“Wait, father Jack, wait for us! We will all go together,” exclaimed the gens de l’equipage; for Jack contributed much to their amusement. When they had mounted their horses, they followed the keeper, getting off a hundred jokes on the old mare, to which he was much attached.

They very soon passed by two young lords who had halted near the verge of the forest, and were engaged in conversation.

One of them held in leash four beautiful greyhounds, especial favorites of the king because of their great sagacity and swiftness in the chase. Their keeper, however, was obliged to use the lash, in order to stop their clamorous baying.

“You have seen her, then?” he remarked to his companion.

“Yes, I have seen her down yonder. She crossed the road with all of her ladies,” replied the latter, who belonged to Wolsey’s household and wore his livery. “She was dressed in a black velvet cap and green riding-habit and she is really charming!”

“Well, my poor friend,” replied the other, “but do you know I have serious fears that your cardinal will soon fall into disfavor? But a moment ago, as they passed by here, I heard the Duke of Norfolk remark to a lady that the red cloak was decidedly out of style, and altogether it was at this time so completely used up that he did not think it could ever again be mended. The lady smiled maliciously, and said he was right—she believed the green mantle would eventually end by tearing the red to pieces! And pointing to the young Anne Boleyn, who was not far off, she made a sign that left no doubt on my mind it was that lady she meant to designate as the destroyer.”

“Truly,” replied the young domestic,[137] “what you tell me is anything but encouraging. And so our dear duke must have his finger in the pie! I shall be very sorry for all this if it happens, because my own clothes, are made of scarlet, you see; and when one has succeeded, in the course of time, in getting a suit well made up, he doesn’t like the trouble of having to commence again and make it over.”

As he said this a cloud of dust arose, and a troop of horsemen passed at full gallop and with a terrible hue and cry.

“My dogs! my dogs!” cried the king in the midst of the crowd. “Let loose my dogs! The deer makes for the ponds. Let them hasten to tell the ladies, that they may be in at the death.”

He disappeared like a flash of lightning, of which we obtain but a glimpse ere it is gone. The shrill notes of the hunter’s horn resounded from afar, awaking countless echoes through the forest.

“Let us go,” exclaimed the two young men simultaneously. “We will then get rid of these accursed hounds.”

“To the ponds! To the ponds!” they cried. “The ladies, to the ponds! The ladies, to the ponds!” And they started on, laughing and shouting.

“What is that you are shouting down there?” cried a huntsman from a distance, whose horse had just made him roll in the dust.

“To the ponds! My lord, to the ponds!” they cried.

The retinue surrounding the Duke of Suffolk put whip to their horses and followed in a sweeping gallop. From every side of the hills surrounding these ponds there appeared, at the same moment, troops of eager hunters, panting and covered with dust. The different roads traversing the forest in every direction converged and met on the banks of the ponds that slept in the basin thus formed.

The ladies had already assembled, and nothing could have been more entertaining than the rapid and eager movements of the remainder of the hunters as they came galloping up. The king arrived before any of the others. He excelled in exercises of this kind, and took great delight in ending the chase in a brilliant manner by shooting the deer himself. On this occasion he had decided that, contrary to the usual custom, it should be taken alive; consequently, they hastened to spread in every direction the nets and fillets.

In this case the skill of the hunters consisted in driving the game into the snare.

Very soon the deer made his appearance, followed by a multitude of hounds, who pursued him so furiously, and crowded so closely one against the other, that, to use a familiar expression of the hunters, they could have been covered with a table-cloth.

At sight of the nets the beautiful animal paused for an instant. He shook his horns menacingly, and stamped the ground with his feet; then suddenly, feeling already the scorching breath of the infuriated pack of hounds about to seize him, he made a desperate effort, and, leaping at a single bound the entire height of the fillets, threw himself into the lake. Instantly a loud and deafening shout arose, while the furious hounds, arrested in their course by the nets, uttered the most frightful howlings on seeing their prey escape.

“My cross-bow!” cried the king. “Quick! my cross-bow!” and he drew it so skilfully that at the first shot he pierced the flank of the poor animal, who immediately ceased to swim.

Satisfied with his brilliant success, the king, after having heard the plaudits of the ladies and received the congratulations of the hunters, proceeded to the pavilion, constructed of evergreens and foliage, as elegant as it was spacious, which he had had erected in the midst of the forest, in order to dine under cover.

The Duchess of Suffolk did the honors of the festival, taking the place of Queen Catherine, who, under the pretext of bad health, declined appearing at these hunting parties, the noisy sports having become insupportable to her.

Meanwhile the courtiers were greatly excited by observing a roll of paper the extremity of which projected from the right pocket of the king’s hunting-jacket; on one of the leaves, a corner of which was turned down, two words were visible—the name of “Wolsey” and that of “traitor.” Each one sought to approach the king or pass behind him in order to assure himself of the astonishing fact, of which they had the temerity to whisper mysteriously together.

But in spite of all their efforts, they were unable to discover anything more; the day and the festival ended with numerous conjectures—the fears and hopes excited in the minds of that court where for so long the learned favorite had ruled with as much authority as the king himself.

At daybreak on the morning succeeding the festival the gates were thrown open, and a carriage, bearing the royal arms and colors, drove from the great courtyard of Windsor Palace.

While the postilion trotted leisurely along, looking around from time to time as he wonderingly reflected why the horse on his right grew constantly lean in spite of the generous addition he had made to his rations, the two occupants of the carriage engaged in the following conversation:

“It is cold this morning,” said one of them, wrapping his cloak more closely about him.

“Yes; and how this fog and the heavy dew covering the earth remind one of the bivouac!”

“It does indeed,” responded Norfolk to his companion; “but such souvenirs are always agreeable, and carry us back to the happiest days of life—years spent amid the tumult and vicissitudes of the camp. Eighteen! that impulsive, impetuous age, when presumptuous courage rushes headlong into danger, comprehending nothing of death; when reckless intrepidity permits not a moment’s reflection or hesitation, transported by the ardent desire of acquiring glory; the intoxicating happiness of a first success—such are the thrilling emotions, the brilliant illusions of youth, which we shall experience no more!” And the old warrior sorrowfully bowed his head.

“Ah! well, others replace them,” replied Suffolk.

“Yes, to be displaced and disappear in their turn,” answered the duke, brushing back the white locks the wind had blown over his forehead, on which appeared a deep scar.

“Well, my lord,” exclaimed the Duke of Suffolk, “do not spoil, by your philosophic reflections, all the pleasure we ought to enjoy in the thought that, thanks to the influence and good management of your charming niece, we are now going to inform Monseigneur Wolsey that the time has at last arrived for him to abdicate his portion of the crown.”

“Yes, perhaps so,” replied the duke. “And yet I don’t know. Yesterday, even, I detested this man, and desired most ardently his ruin; to-day—no, no; an enemy vanquished and prostrate at my feet inspires only compassion. Now I almost regret the injury my niece has done him and the blow she has struck.”

“Come, come, my lord, do you not know that an excess of generosity becomes a fault? We have nothing to regret,” continued Suffolk, with an exulting laugh. “I only hope he may not be acquitted (and thus be able to settle the scores with us afterwards); that Parliament will show him no mercy. Death alone can effectually remove him. The little memorandum you have there contains enough to hang all the chancellors in the world.”

“It is very certain,” replied the Duke of Norfolk, abstractedly turning the leaves of the book he held in his hand (the same that had excited such eager curiosity among the courtiers)—“it is certain this book contains grave accusations. Nevertheless, I do not think it has entirely accomplished the end proposed by the author.”

“In truth, no,” answered Suffolk; “for Wiltshire counted very certainly on replacing Wolsey. He will be astounded when he learns of the choice of the king.”

“Although Wiltshire is a relative of mine,” replied the duke, “I am compelled to acknowledge that it would have been impossible for the king to have made a better selection or avoided a worse one. Wiltshire is both ignorant and ambitious, while Thomas More has no superior in learning and merit. I knew him when quite a child, living with the distinguished Cardinal Morton, who was particularly attached to him. I remember very often at table Morton speaking of him to us, and always saying: ‘This young boy will make an extraordinary man. You will see it. I shall not be living, but you will then recall the prediction of an old man.’”

“Extraordinary!” replied Suffolk in his habitual tone of raillery; “most extraordinary! We are promised, then, a chancellor of a peculiar species! I suppose he will not be the least astonished at receiving so high and singular a favor. But, the devil! he will need to be a wonderful man. If he sustains himself on the throne ministerial, he will find a superior degree of wisdom necessary. Between the king, the queen, the council, Wiltshire, the Parliament, the clergy, and the people, I would not risk my little finger, brother-in-law of his majesty although I have the honor to be.”

And he began laughing as he looked at Norfolk, although, out of deference to him, he had not included in the list of difficulties the most formidable of all, and the one that carried all others in its train—his niece, Mlle. Anne.

“In the sense you use the word,” the duke answered coldly, “I believe, on the contrary, he is by no means an astute man. The intrigues of court will be altogether foreign to his character; but otherwise, in science and learning, he has no equal. He is in possession of all that a man is capable of acquiring in that direction, and no man has made a more profound study of the common law and the statutes of the kingdom. Morton placed him at Oxford, then at the Chancellors’ College at Lincoln, and he achieved the most brilliant success.”

“Admirable!” exclaimed Suffolk, laughing.

“Since that time,” pursued the Duke of Norfolk, “his reputation has continued to increase. When he lectured in S. Lawrence’s Church, the celebrated Dr. Grocyn and all of our London savants crowded eagerly to hear him.”

“Well! well! I knew nothing of these most agreeable particulars,” said Suffolk; “I only knew that it was he who induced Parliament to refuse the subsidy demanded for the Queen of Scots. If he continues to repeat such exploits as that, I venture to predict he will not be chancellor very long.”

“Oh! as to that,” replied the duke, “he is a man who will never compromise his conscience. Yes, yes, I recall distinctly the enraged expression of the present king’s father when Mr. Tyler came to inform him that the House of Commons had rejected his demand, and a beardless youth had been the cause of it. I have not forgotten, either, that Henry VII., of happy memory, well knew how to avenge himself by having an enormous fine imposed on Sir Thomas’ father.”

“Well,” replied Suffolk, “but it was not always expedient for the House of Commons to raise money in that way.”

The conversation was continued in this manner, as the hours glided by, until at length the glittering spires of the London churches appeared in the distance, and very soon the carriage had entered the narrow, gloomy streets of that great city.

Just at this time the soul of Wolsey was replenished with an inexpressible quietude and contentment. “At last,” he said to himself, “my enemies have all been confounded. I can no longer entertain a doubt respecting my power, after the most gracious manner in which the king has treated me at Grafton. I trust the influence of Anne Boleyn has diminished in the same proportion that mine has increased. Now she wants Sir Thomas Cheney recalled; but I shall not consent to that. Campeggio goes loaded with honorable presents. The influence of the mistress will soon cease, and that ambitious fool Wiltshire will lose the fruit of his intrigues.…” As the Cardinal of York consoled himself with these agreeable reflections, the arrival of the Venetian ambassador was announced.

“Ah! so he presents himself at last,” Wolsey exclaimed. “He has been a long time demanding an audience!” And he ordered him to be introduced.

Wolsey received him in the most gracious manner. After the usual compliments were exchanged, he proposed showing him the honors of the palace. He had spent his life in embellishing and adorning it with wonderful treasures of industry and art, of which he was the enlightened and generous protector, bestowing on them from his own purse the most liberal encouragement.

Numerous galleries, in which an exquisite taste had evidently directed even the most trivial ornamentation, were filled with paintings, statues, and precious antique vases. Superb Flanders tapestries gleamed on all sides, covered the panels, were disposed around the windows, and fell in heavy drapery before the openings of the doors to conceal the entrance. These precious cloths, then of inestimable value, were only found in the palaces of kings. They usually represented some historical or poetical subject; and sometimes landscapes and the rarest flowers were wrought and tinted with reflections of gold. Finally, Wolsey took occasion to point out, among all these treasures, the presents he had received at different times from the various princes of Europe who had sought to secure his influence.

Charmed with the order, taste, and beauty that reigned throughout the palace, the Italian admired everything, surprised to find in this foreign clime a condition of luxury that recalled the memory, always pleasing, yet sometimes sad, of his own country.

“Alas!” he exclaimed at length, “we also were rich and happy, and reposed in peace and security in our palaces, before this war in which we have been so unfortunate as to rely on the King of France for assistance. He has abandoned us; and now, compelled to pay an enormous tribute, the republic finds itself humiliated in the dust beneath the sceptre of the haughty emperor!”

“Such is the right of the conqueror,” replied Wolsey. “You are fortunate, inasmuch as he is forced to use that right with moderation.”

“It seems a heavy burden to us, this moderation!” replied the ambassador. “He not only exacts immense sums of money, but compels us to surrender territory we have conquered with our blood. Florence is placed under the dominion of the Medici, and all of our Italian princes are reduced to a condition of entire dependence.”

“Which, of course, they will shake off at the first opportunity,” interrupted Wolsey. “Charles V. is too shrewd not to foresee that. Be assured he will endeavor to secure your good-will, because your support is indispensable to enable him to resist the formidable power of the Sultan Soliman, and the invasions of the barbarians subject to his authority.”

“In that we have placed our last hope. If our services can be made available, then from vanquished enemies we may become united allies. Already the emperor foresees it; for he overwhelms Andrew Doria and the republic of Genoa with favors. He seems to have forgotten the injuries he suffered from Sforza; he received him most affably at court, and promised him the Princess of Denmark, his niece, in marriage.”

“I am informed,” said Wolsey, “that he is deeply afflicted by the death of the Prince of Orange.”

“Very much,” replied the ambassador. “The prince was a valiant captain. He leaves no children; his titles and landed property will descend to the children of his sister Rénée, the Countess of Nassau.”

“And they are all German princes who have thrown themselves headlong into the Lutheran heresy. They will endeavor to cast off the yoke of the emperor, and become altogether independent.”

“They have no other intention,” replied the ambassador; “and by separating from the Church of Rome they hope more surely to effect their purpose. However, the decree laid before the diet against the religious innovations has passed by a large majority.”

“Yes,” replied Wolsey; “but you see the Elector of Saxony, the Marquis of Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Dukes of Luneburg, and the Prince d’Anhalt are all leagued against the church, with the deputies of fourteen imperial cities, and are designated by no other name than that of Protestant.”

“I am aware of that,” replied the ambassador. “It will greatly increase the difficulties in carrying out the emperor’s secret project,” he continued after a moment’s silence. “Perhaps, however, he may succeed in making the crown hereditary in his family.”

“That is what we shall have to prevent!” cried Wolsey vehemently, who, at the words of the ambassador, felt all his old hatred toward Charles V. revive. “We will never suffer it, neither will France. No, no; I am very certain France will never permit it.”

“Ah!” replied the ambassador, shaking his head with a doubtful air, either because he was not convinced, but more probably because he was well pleased to arouse against the conqueror of Venice the animosity of England (still, as he considered, entirely governed by the will of the minister who stood before him).

“I assure you of it most positively,” answered Wolsey; “and I wish you to bear it in mind.” And he regarded him with an expression of perfect confidence and authority.

“I hope it may be so,” said the ambassador in an abstracted manner. “We certainly desire nothing more.”

“Ah! if he had only you to oppose him,” answered Wolsey, resuming his usual haughtiness, “I should doubt of success. See where you stand,” he continued, with the secret satisfaction of national pride. “Invaded on all sides, Italy can oppose but a feeble barrier to the power of two such bold and daring pirates. Is it not a shame, then, to see these obscure and cruel robbers, sons of a Lesbian potter—two barbarians, in fact—reigning sovereigns of the kingdom of Algiers, which they have seized, and from whence they fearlessly go forth to destroy the Christian fleets on every sea? When would you be able to conquer these ocean pirates—you, who have but a gibbet for your couch and a halter for your vestment? Justice would be kept a long time waiting!”

The Italian reddened and bit his lip. He vainly sought words in which to reply, and was relieved of his embarrassment when the door opened and admitted the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk.

They entered without the usual ceremonies or salutations, and Wolsey, surprised at seeing Suffolk, whom he had not met since the altercation at Blackfriars, regarded them with astonishment. He arose, however, and advanced toward them. Suffolk, with a disdainful gesture, referred him to the Duke of Norfolk.

Astonished at the coldness of the one, the brusque impoliteness of the other, and embarrassed by the presence of the ambassador, the cardinal stood motionless, undecided what to think or say.

“My lords,” he at length exclaimed, “what do you desire of me?”

“We want you to deliver up the seal of state,” replied Norfolk, without changing countenance.

“What do you say, my lord?” cried Wolsey, stupefied with astonishment.

“The king has ordered it,” continued the duke with the same imperturbable manner.

“The king! Can it be possible?” said Wolsey, dismayed, and in a voice almost inaudible. “The seal of state! And what have I done? What? Can this be true? No, my lord, no,” he suddenly exclaimed with an expression of indescribable terror; “it cannot be true! You have mistaken the king; I do not deserve any such treatment. I pray you let me see him; let me speak to him for a moment—one single moment. Alas! alas!”

And he glanced at the ambassador, who, astounded himself at first, and feeling himself out of place in the presence of this mighty downfall, had involuntarily withdrawn towards the door.

“It is no longer a question to be submitted to the king,” cried Suffolk in a threatening and defiant manner; “it is only necessary now to obey him, and he orders you instantly to deliver up the seal.”

“The order is imperative,” added Norfolk in a cold and serious manner. “I regret being charged with a commission which to you, my lord, must be so painful.”

He said no more. But Suffolk, base and jealous in his nature, was not ashamed to add to the humiliation of the unfortunate cardinal.

“Come, my good friend,” he said in an ironical voice, “why do you beg so imploringly? One would suppose we had demanded the apple of your eye. You have been putting the seal so long now on our purses and tongues, you ought not to be surprised nor annoyed that we feel like using it awhile ourselves.”

This cowardly insult exasperated Wolsey, but his courage was roused with his indignation.

“My Lord Suffolk,” he answered with dignity, “I am sorry for you and for the prompt manner in which you seem to forget in their misfortune those who in days of prosperity were always found ready to come to your assistance. I hope you may never experience how painful it is to endure a similar cruel ingratitude.”

He immediately withdrew, and returned with the richly-adorned casket containing the great seal of state.

Holding it in his trembling hand, he avoided Suffolk, and, advancing rapidly toward the Duke of Norfolk, handed it to him.

“My lord,” he said, “here are the seals of the kingdom of England. Let the king’s will be done. Since I received them from his hand, fifteen years ago, I am conscious of having done nothing to merit his displeasure. I trust he will one day deign to render me full justice, for I have never proved myself unworthy of his favor.”

As he uttered the last words, he was unable to restrain the tears which involuntarily arose to his eyes.

Although the cardinal was by no means a favorite with the Duke of Norfolk, he was moved with compassion, and sadly reflected that he had still more painful intelligence to communicate.

He glanced at his companion, but, fearing the bitter and poignant irony in which Suffolk never failed to indulge, he hastened to prevent it in order to spare Wolsey.

“My lord cardinal,” he said, “you ought to reflect that the king is too just and impartial to withdraw the favor he has so long bestowed on you without having weighed well the reasons and necessities requiring such a course. Nevertheless, his goodness has not abandoned you; he permits you to select such counsel as you may desire to defend you against the accusations presented against you to Parliament.”

“To Parliament!” murmured Wolsey, terror-stricken; for the duke’s last words suddenly disclosed the depth of the abyss into which he had fallen. “To Parliament!” he repeated. The shock he had experienced was so violent that his pride of character, the sense of personal dignity, the presence of his enemies, were all forgotten in a moment, and he abandoned himself to despair. Unable longer to sustain himself, he sank on his knees. “I am lost!” he cried, weeping and extending his hands toward his persecutors. “Have pity on me, my Lord Norfolk! I give up all to the king! Let him do with me what he will! Since he says I am culpable, although I have never had the intention, yet I will acknowledge that I am. But, alas! of what do they accuse me?”

“Of having violated the statutes of præmunire,” replied Norfolk.

“And betraying your country,” continued Suffolk, “by carrying on a secret correspondence with the King of France. You well remember that it was you who had me recalled at the moment when, having become master of Artois and Picardy, I had the Parisians trembling within their walls? Will you dare deny that you were the cause of it, and that it was the prière d’argent of Mme. Louise[138] induced you to give the order for me to retire? The king has been already long enough your dupe, and our duty was to enlighten him. As to the rest, my lord cardinal, you understand the proceedings; your advocate ought to be here, and you should immediately confer with him with regard to the other charges herein contained.”

As he said this, he threw on the cardinal’s table the bill of presentment, which contained no less than forty-four chief accusations.

They then took possession of all the papers they could find, carrying away the seal of state, and left Wolsey in a condition deserving pity.

As they retired, they proposed sending in the advocate, who was waiting in an adjoining apartment conversing with Cromwell.

“Ha! ha! you are here, then, Sir Cromwell,” said the Duke of Suffolk, laughing. “Go in, go in there at once,” he cried, pointing to the door of Wolsey’s cabinet. “The cardinal needs you; I fear he will be hard to console.”

Cromwell watched with great anxiety the course of events, and, not knowing to which side to turn, determined at least to secure for himself the appearance and merit of fidelity to his benefactor. Without reflecting on the consequences, he hastily replied that he would not leave Wolsey, would never abandon him, but follow him to the end.

“You will follow him to the end, eh?” replied Suffolk. “When you know his intended destination, I doubt very much if you will then ask to follow him.”

As he said this, he made a gesture giving Cromwell to understand that his master, besides losing place and power, was also in danger of losing his head.

“High treason, my dear sir, high treason!” cried Suffolk. “Do you hear me?”

“High treason?” repeated Cromwell slowly. “Ah! my lord duke, how could he be guilty?”

He hastened to rejoin Wolsey, whom he found bathed in tears and endeavoring to decipher the act of presentment.

“Ah! Cromwell,” exclaimed the unhappy cardinal on seeing him, “my dear friend, you have not then forsaken me! But, alas! I am lost. Read here for yourself—read it aloud to me; for my sight is failing.”

Cromwell seized the paper and commenced reading the accusation. On hearing that it was based principally on the violation of the statutes of præmunire,[139] Wolsey was unable to control his indignation.

“How,” he cried, “can the king be induced to sanction such unparalleled injustice? It is true that in receiving from the pope the title of legate, and exercising throughout the kingdom the authority conferred by that title, I have been brought in opposition to the precautionary statutes of King Richard; but still I have not violated them, since the king himself has sanctioned that power and recognized it by appearing in his own person before the court. Is he not more to blame, then, who desired and ordered it, than I, who have simply been made a party to it? I can prove this,” he cried—“yes, I can prove it; for I have still the letters-patent, signed by his own hand, and which he furnished me to that effect. Cromwell, look in my secretary; you will find them there.”

Cromwell opened the secretary, but found nothing.

“There is not a single paper here,” he said. “Where could you have placed them?”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the cardinal. “Then they have all been carried away! All!” he repeated. “I have no longer any means of defence; I am lost! They are all arrayed against me; they have resolved upon my death. O Henry! O my king! is it thus you forget in one moment the services I have rendered you? Cromwell,” he continued in a low voice and gloomy, abstracted manner—“Cromwell, I am lost!”

The same evening another messenger came to inform the unhappy cardinal the king wished to occupy, during the session of Parliament he was about to convene, his palace of York (the object of his care and pride), and that in leaving it he could retire to, and have at his disposal, a house about eight leagues from London, entirely abandoned, and belonging to the bishopric of Winchester.

The night, already far advanced, found Sir Thomas More still seated in his cabinet, conversing with the Bishop of Rochester, who had arrived at Chelsea very late that morning.

A light was burning on a long table encumbered with books and papers; several high-backed chairs, covered with black morocco, cast their shadows on the walls; a capacious rug of white sheep-skin was spread before the hearth, where the remains of a fire still burned in the grate.

Such was the simplicity of the home of Sir Thomas More.

“And why, my dear friend,” asked the Bishop of Rochester, “will you consent to take upon your shoulders so terrible a responsibility? Once become chancellor, have you fully considered that you will be surrounded by enemies, who will watch your every movement and pursue you even to your death? Have you reflected well that you acknowledge no other laws than those of your own conscience, and feel no remorse unless for not having spoken your views with sufficient candor? Is it thus you hope to resist—thus you hope to escape the snares that will continually surround you?”

“I fear nothing,” replied More; “for I believe in God! And you yourself—would you not blame such weakness? In refusing the king I refuse the queen. Would not Catherine then declare that the trusted servant, even he who had been called her friend, had sacrificed her interests to his love of ease? He had declared his life should be devoted to her cause, and now had abandoned and deprived her of the only hope of relief Providence seemed to have left her! No, Fisher, friendship has rights too sacred for me not to respect them.”

“Then,” cried the bishop, “if you respect the rights of friendship, listen to my appeal! I ask you to decline a dignity that will prove destructive to you. In the name of all that you hold most dear, in the name of all that is good and beautiful in nature, in the entire universe, I conjure you to refuse this fatal honor! It is more than probable the very seal they wish now to place in your hands will be very soon affixed to your death-warrant! Believe me, my friend, all will unite against you. A deep conviction has taken possession of my soul, and I see, I feel, the wrath of this prince, as violent as he is cruel, ready to fall upon your devoted head. You will be crushed in this struggle, too unequal to admit for an instant the hope of escape.”

“Ah! well,” replied More laughingly, “instead, then, of simply inscribing on my tombstone ‘Here lies Thomas More,’ there will appear in pompous style the inscription, ‘Here lies the Lord High Chancellor of England.’ Assuredly, I think that would sound much better, and I shall take care to bequeath my first quarter’s salary to defray the expense of so elegant an inscription.”

“More!” cried the Bishop of Rochester with impatience, “I cannot suffer you to jest on a subject of such grave importance. Do you, then, desire to die? Would you ruin yourself? Trust to my experience. I know the heart of Henry thoroughly; your attempt to save the queen will be vain, and you will inevitably be involved in her ruin. I conjure you, then, accept not this office. I will myself carry your refusal to the king.”

“No, no!” exclaimed More. “I have decided—decided irrevocably.”

“Irrevocably?” repeated Rochester, whom the thought reduced almost to despair. “More, I see it. You have become ambitious; the vainglory of the world, the fatal infatuation of its honors, have taken possession even of the soul of Thomas More! Your heart no longer responds to mine; your ear remains deaf to all my solicitations! Ah! well, since the desire of being honored among men, and to have them grovel at your feet, has made even you despise my counsel and advice, then listen, listen well, and God grant that I may be able to destroy in your heart the poison that pride has poured into it! You are willing to sacrifice to your vanity all the happiness, all the quiet and peace, of your future; know, then, what recompense will be meted out to you. Yesterday Wolsey was in a manner driven from his palace, and descended the Thames in a common boat, Cromwell alone accompanying him; for all have deserted him except his enemies, who, in order to enjoy his calamities, crowded the river in boats and followed after him. They hoped to see him arrested and carried to the Tower, the report having been circulated that he would be taken there. Wolsey—he whom you have so often seen make his appearance in Parliament, surrounded by an almost royal pomp and splendor—is now a fugitive, alone, abandoned, without defence, of the clamorous insults and bitter scorn of a populace always eager to feast their eyes on the ruins of fallen greatness. The air around him resounded with their maledictions. ‘Here is the man who fattened on the blood of the poor,’ they cried. ‘The taxes will be reduced now,’ exclaimed others, ‘since he will have no farther use for palaces and gardens’; and all, in their ignorance, abused him as the cause of the wrongs and oppressions which it was probably not in his power to have averted. At length, overwhelmed with insults and outrages, he was landed at Pultney, and, in order to escape the mob, was hurriedly conducted to his house at Asher, where he has been banished. Such is the reward you will receive in the service of an avaricious prince and a blind infatuated multitude!”

He paused, overcome by anxiety and excitement.

“My dear Fisher,” responded More, deeply moved, “our hearts and thoughts are always in unison; you have only represented to me a second time the picture I had already painted myself.”

“Indeed!” cried Rochester; “and do you still hesitate?”

“What!” replied More, resolutely, “and does it require so much hesitation to sacrifice one’s self? I would not wish to live dishonored; and I should consider myself guilty if I forgot my duty toward my sovereign and the honor of England!”

“So you are resolved! Ah! well, let your sacrifice be accomplished,” said the saintly bishop; “but then may God, whose goodness is infinite, hear my vows and grant my prayer: may the same dangers unite us; side by side with you may my last sigh be breathed out with yours; and if the life of the aged man is not extinguished before that of the man in his prime, then may the stroke of death cut us down at the same moment!”

“My dear friend,” cried More, “the many years that have passed over your head and blanched your locks have not yet ripened your judgment, since you can believe it possible that the king’s anger, although it may one day fall on me, could ever be permitted to overtake you, the counsellor of his youth, whom he has so often called his father! No, I can conceive of no such fearful possibility; the wise, the virtuous Bishop of Rochester can never be involved in the misfortune that would crush Thomas More.”

“Ah!” replied Fisher, “but I shall understand how to call down on my head the vengeance with which he may hesitate to strike me. Believe me, More, a man scarcely reaches the prime of life before he feels himself, as it were, daily beginning to fail. Just as in the autumn days the sun’s light rapidly diminishes, so the passing years despoil his body of physical strength and beauty; but it has no effect upon his soul. The heart—no, the heart never grows old! It loves, it suffers, as in the early morning of life; and when at last it has reached the age when wisdom and experience have destroyed the illusions of the passions, friendship, strengthened by so many blessed memories, reigns there alone and entire, like a magnificent flower that has been sheltered and preserved from the destroying worm.

“Having almost arrived at the end of his career, he often takes a survey of the road he has passed over. He loves to recall his joys and his sorrows, and to weep again for the friends he has lost. I know that presumptuous youth imagines that the prudence he refuses to obey is the only good that remains after the labors of life have been terminated by time.

“Your feelings are not in unison with those of an old man. It is because you do not understand them. He lives in memory, and you in hope. You pursue a phantom, a chimera, the nothingness of which he has already experienced; you accuse him, he complains of you, and often you do not deign to regard the last bitter tear that is drawn from him at the sight of the tomb into which he must soon descend.”

“Oh!” exclaimed More, “you whom I venerate as a father and love as a friend—can you doubt for one moment the truth of a heart entirely devoted to you? Confirmed by your example, guided and sustained by your counsels, what have I to fear? Banish from your mind these sad presentiments. Why should this dread of the future, that perhaps after all is only chimerical, destroy the extreme happiness I enjoy in seeing you?”

For a long time they continued to converse, until the light of early morning at length succeeded the uncertain glimmer of the candle, now flickering in its socket.

“My friend, I must leave you,” said Rochester. “The day already dawns. God grant the sun may not this morning arise on the beginning of your misfortunes!”

“Oh! no,” replied More, “this is my fête to-day. S. Thomas will pray for and protect us.”

The good bishop then descended to the courtyard and mounted his mule; but More, unwilling to give him up, walked on by his side as far as the road followed the course of the river. When they reached the cross-road where the bishop turned off, More shook his hand and bade him farewell.

A great wooden cross stood near the roadside, on which was suspended a wreath of withered leaves; and More, seating himself on one of the stone steps upon which the cross was elevated, followed the good bishop with his eyes until he had disappeared in the distance.

He then rested his head sadly on his hands, and recalled to mind all this venerable friend had said to him.

“He is right!” he mentally exclaimed. “How clear-sighted his friendship renders him! Into what a sea of agitation, malignity, and hatred I shall be plunged! And all for what? In order that I may be lord chancellor of the kingdom through which this road passes. Behold, then, beside the highway,” he added, looking around him, “my lord the great high chancellor, shivering in the cold morning air just as any other man would do who had gone out at this hour without putting on his cloak!… Yes, I can understand how social distinctions might cause us to scorn other men, if they exempted us from the inconveniences of life. We might then perhaps believe that we had different natures. But let us change our garments, and we fall at once, and are immediately confounded with the common herd.”

While making these sad reflections upon the follies of human nature, More arose and returned to the house, where his wife and children and his aged father—simple and peaceable old man, happy in the favor of the king and the virtues of his son—were all wrapped in profound slumber.

In a spacious apartment, of which the dark and worm-eaten ceiling, ragged tapestry, and dilapidated windows presented the appearance of a desolate and abandoned edifice, a fragment of broken furniture still remained, upon which was placed a small piece of bread. Numberless crumbs strewed the dusty floor and were eagerly devoured by a little mouse, but recently the only inhabitant of the place. To-day, however, he had the company of a man whose extraordinary mind had conceived vast projects and executed great and useful enterprises—the Archbishop of York, Cardinal Wolsey. Seated upon the edge of a wooden stool which he had placed in the embrasure of a window, he held his hands crossed one upon the other, and bitterly reflected upon his unhappy destiny. Regrets, of which he felt all the impotency, pressed upon his agitated soul. It seemed to him that he still heard the cries and menaces of the furious populace that exulted in his distress, and to which perhaps, alas! he would again be subjected. At one time filled with courage and resolution, at another humble and cast down, the anxieties of his mind seemed wholly without measure. His eyes, wearied with straying listlessly over the plain which extended before him, beheld only a single laborer ploughing the field. “Man is small,” said he, “in presence of immensity; the point which he forms in space is imperceptible. Entire generations have passed away, have gathered the fruits of the earth, and now sleep in their native dust. My name has been unknown to them. Millions of creatures suffer, where I exist free from pain. Coming up from the lowest ranks of society, I have endeavored to elevate myself above them. And what has my existence signified to them? Has not each one considered himself the common centre around which all the others must revolve?”

Here Wolsey, impelled by extreme hunger, approached the little worm-eaten table, and took up the morsel of dry bread left from his repast the evening before.

Just as he was raising it to his mouth a man entered, dressed in the most scrupulous manner, and enveloped in an ample cloak of the finest material.

Wolsey was startled, and gazed at him in astonishment.

“What! Arundel,” he exclaimed at last, “what could have brought you to this place?”

“Yourself,” replied Arundel, in a frank, abrupt manner. “You have lost everything, and have never informed me by a word! Do you think, then, I have forgotten all you have done for me?”

“The favors I have conferred on you were so slight,” replied Wolsey, “that it would have been natural you should have no longer remembered them, especially since many who owe their wealth, and perhaps their lives, to me have so completely forgotten it.”

“I have never learned how to flatter nor to wear velvet gloves,” replied Arundel; “but I am still more ignorant of the art of forgetting past favors. No, it has never been my custom to act thus; and you have offended me more than you imagine by proving you believed me capable of such baseness.”

As he said this, Arundel took from his bosom an immense purse of red satin, filled with gold, and laid it on the dilapidated table beside a package of clothing which he had thoughtfully added to his gift.

“There are no acknowledgments to be made,” he remarked; “it is essential first of all that you be made comfortable. You can return this when it suits your convenience. Now let us say no more about it.”

“Alas!” cried Wolsey, “are you not aware, then, that I may never be able to return it? They will divide my ecclesiastical benefices among them. The Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Wiltshire have already been put in possession of the revenue from my bishopric of Winchester. This is the only food I have had since I came here,” he added, showing him the bread he still held in his hand.

“Indeed! It is not very delicate,” replied Arundel; “but it is your own fault. When one has friends, he should not neglect them, and that is just what you have done.”

“Misfortune often renders us unjust,” answered the cardinal, deeply moved by the generous frankness and brusque proceedings of Arundel, whom he had always, until now, regarded as being haughty and ungrateful, because he had never observed him among his crowd of fawning courtiers. “I must confess that I could not endure the thought of being repulsed by those for whom I have done everything. I do not believe that among the immense number of those who daily wearied me with protestations of their ostentatious regard there is to-day one who has condescended to think of me in my misfortunes. You only have thought to succor me in my distress—you, who, without my being aware of it, have doubtless been all the while the most sincere among them all.”

“I cannot believe,” replied Arundel, without appearing to notice the acknowledgments with which Wolsey continued to overwhelm him, “that they would all thus have abandoned you had they known the extreme severity with which you have been treated; it would be too foul a blot upon the name of humanity. Notwithstanding they laugh at our misfortunes, I think it appears worse to us than it really is. No, be assured you will find some faithful friends who will defend you. For instance, Sir Thomas More, your successor, whose fortune you have made, cannot fail to use his influence in your favor.”

“More owes me nothing,” replied the cardinal. “I have not made his fortune; when I proposed him to the king as Treasurer of the Exchequer, he had for a long time been acquainted with his rare merits. Knowing that the appointment would prove both useful and agreeable to the king, I recommended him to make it; but really it was more for the king’s benefit than More’s. Besides, I am aware that More is one of the most zealous partisans of Catherine. Thus, you see, there exists no reason why he should feel inclined to assist me. I am only surprised that a man of his exalted integrity should accept a position where he will necessarily be compelled to act in opposition to his convictions.”

“It is with the eager desire of ultimately being able to convert all the world and to correct all consciences,” replied Arundel with a smile of derision; for he never lost an occasion of ridiculing the importance which many attach to political intrigues, and, as they say, to the public good, in whose management they pretend to take a hand, in order to win admiration at any cost for their talents. “And verily, he will find it difficult to sustain his position, unless he becomes the very humble servant of my Lady Anne, regent of the kingdom; for nothing is done but what she ordains, and her uncle, whom she has appointed chief of the council, executes the orders which the king claims the honor of communicating to him. Oh!” continued Arundel in the same ironical tone, and without perceiving the painful effect his words produced on the unhappy cardinal, “truly it is a very great advantage, and above all highly honorable for England, to see her king put in tutelage to the caprices of a woman as weak and vain as she is arrogant. If he was absolutely determined to go into leading-strings, why did he not beseech the good Queen Catherine to take charge of him? She, at least, would have been careful to hold the reins equally on both sides, so that the swaddling could have been made to walk straight.”

“A swaddling,” repeated Wolsey, “… who devoured his nurse!”

“Hold, my dear lord,” continued Arundel; “it cannot be denied that you have made a great mistake in encouraging the king in his divorce project—yes, a great mistake, which they now begin to discover. But I do wrong, perhaps, to reproach you, since you are the first to be punished for your manner of seeing things. But listen to me; as for myself, if, in order to avoid dying of starvation, or being compelled to subsist on just such bread as you have there, I had been obliged to accept the place of lord chancellor, on the day when I found myself relieved of so burdensome and exacting an office I should have cried aloud: ‘Thank heaven that I am again seated by my own fireside, where in peace and quiet I can get up at my leisure and contemplate passing events.’ For myself, these are my principles: to have nothing to do is the first essential to happiness; nothing to lose, the second; nothing to disturb or annoy, the third; and upon these rest all the others. Such is my system—the best of all systems, the only.…”

Arundel would have still continued explaining the numerous theories he had originated for securing happiness for an indefinite length of time, perhaps, but he suddenly perceived that Wolsey no longer heard him, but, with his head sunk on his breast, seemed absorbed in thought.