[Lewis enters.]
Lewis. Good morrow, gentles. Why so warm, Count Walter?
Your blessing, Father Abbot: what deep matters
Have called our worships to this conference?
C. Hugo [aside]. Up, Count; you are spokesman.
3d Count. Exalted Prince,
Whose peerless knighthood, like the remeant sun,
After too long a night, regilds our clay,
Late silvered by the reflex lunar beams
Of your celestial lady’s matron graces—
Abbot [aside]. Ut vinum optimum amati mei
Dulciter descendens!
3 Count. Think not we mean to praise or disapprove—
The acts of saintly souls must only plead
In foro conscientiæ: grosser minds,
Whose humbler aim is but the public weal,
Know of no mesh which holds them: yet, great Prince,
Some dare not see their sovereign’s strength postponed
To private grace, and sigh, that generous hearts,
And ladies’ tenderness, too oft forgetting
That wisdom is the highest charity,
Will interfere, in pardonable haste,
With heaven’s stern providence.
Lewis. We see your drift.
Go, sirrah [to a Page]; pray the Princess to illumine
Our conclave with her beauties. ’Tis our manner
To hear no cause, of gentle or of simple,
Unless the accused and the accuser both
Meet face to face.
3d Count. Excuse, high-mightiness,—
We bring no accusation; facts, your Highness,
Wait for your sentence, not our præjudicium.
Lewis. Give us the facts, then, Sir; in the lady’s presence,
Her nearness to ourselves—perchance her reasons—
May make them somewhat dazzling.
Abbot. Nay, my Lord;
I, as a Churchman, though with these your nobles
Both in commission and opinion one,
Am yet most loth, my Lord, to set my seal
To aught which this harsh world might call complaint
Against a princely saint—a chosen vessel—
An argosy celestial—in whom error
Is but the young luxuriance of her grace.
The Count of Varila, as bound to neither,
For both shall speak, and all which late has passed
Upon the matter of this famine open.