“Hound!” interrupted the prince, stamping his foot, “thinkest thou to banter me,—see!” As his foot shook the floor, the door opened, and a man with his arms bare, covered from head to foot in a black gown of serge, with his features concealed by a hideous mask, stood ominously at the aperture.
The prince motioned to the torturer (or tormentor, as he was technically styled) to approach, which he did noiselessly, till he stood, tall, grim, and lowering, beside Adam, like some silent and devouring monster by its prey.
“Dost thou repent thy contumacy? A moment, and I render my questioning to another!”
“Sir,” said Adam, drawing himself up, and with so sudden a change of mien, that his loftiness almost awed even the dauntless Richard,—“sir, my fathers feared not death when they did battle for the throne of England; and why?—because in their loyal valour they placed not the interests of a mortal man, but the cause of imperishable honour! And though their son be a poor scholar, and wears not the spurs of gold; though his frame be weak and his hairs gray, he loveth honour also well eno’ to look without dread on death!”
Fierce and ruthless, when irritated and opposed, as the prince was, he was still in his first youth,—ambition had here no motive to harden him into stone. He was naturally so brave himself that bravery could not fail to win from him something of respect and sympathy, and he was taken wholly by surprise in hearing the language of a knight and hero from one whom he had regarded but as the artful impostor or the despicable intriguer.
He changed countenance as Warner spoke, and remained a moment silent. Then as a thought occurred to him, at which his features relaxed into a half-smile, he beckoned to the tormentor, said a word in his ear, and the horrible intruder nodded and withdrew.
“Master Warner,” then said the prince, in his customary sweet and gliding tones, “it were a pity that so gallant a gentleman should be exposed to peril for adhesion to a cause that can never prosper, and that would be fatal, could it prosper, to our common country. For look you, this Margaret, who is now, we believe, in London” (here he examined Adam’s countenance, which evinced surprise), “this Margaret, who is seeking to rekindle the brand and brennen of civil war, has already sold for base gold to the enemy of the realm, to Louis XI., that very Calais which your fathers, doubtless, lavished their blood to annex to our possessions. Shame on the lewd harlot! What woman so bloody and so dissolute? What man so feeble and craven as her lord?”
“Alas! sir,” said Adam, “I am unfitted for these high considerations of state. I live but for my art, and in it. And now, behold how my kingdom is shaken and rent!” he pointed with so touching a smile, and so simple a sadness, to the broken engine, that Richard was moved.
“Thou lovest this, thy toy? I can comprehend that love for some dumb thing that we have toiled for. Ay!” continued the prince, thoughtfully,—“ay! I have noted myself in life that there are objects, senseless as that mould of iron, which if we labour at them wind round our hearts as if they were flesh and blood. So some men love learning, others glory, others power. Well, man, thou lovest that mechanical? How many years hast thou been about it?”
“From the first to the last, twenty-five years, and it is still incomplete.”