In the anticipation of that moment, Smeaton had often felt how terrible it would be; he had doubted his own courage, his own fortitude; he had nerved his mind to resist all the impulses of his mortal nature, lest he should meanly and faint-heartedly supplicate for life, as others had done. He recollected that there were many endearing ties around him; that youth, and love, and hope, and high health, and all the bright amenities of being, attached him to the world in which he was; that it was full of delight and enjoyment to one so constituted mentally and bodily, and that the thought of parting with it in its hour of greatest excellence might well shake his resolution and undermine his firmness. But when each peer had pronounced his judgment, and when the frightful and barbarous sentence was passed, it was marvellous, even to his own mind, how calmly he bore himself, how firm and composed he felt. It seemed for the moment as if the tremulous, vibrating, anxious cord between hope and fear was snapped, and that his feet were firmly fixed upon the rock of fate. Take away hope, and there is no such thing as fear.
During a short space of time all hope was over in his bosom. But, in the meanwhile, others were preparing hope for him, and to two separate scenes we must turn, where busy love was eagerly exerting itself, in different ways and without concert, to avert the blow from his head. I know not which to depict first; for they both occurred on the same day, and very nearly at the same hour; but perhaps I had better choose the one which, from presenting few if any characters already brought under notice, may have the least interest for the reader.
Into a gorgeous room of a palace, containing a number of distinguished persons--some marked out to the eye by the splendour of their apparel, some by their beauty or their grace--entered a middle-aged man, small in stature, insignificant in appearance, and with his somewhat large head rendered more ridiculously conspicuous by a huge Ramillies wig. He was dressed in tea-coloured velvet, with his sword by his side and his hat on, and the door by which he entered was thrown open for him by one of the high noblemen of the Court; while another, bearing a light in either hand, walked backwards into the room before him. He was a very mean-looking person; cold, unloveable in aspect, looking like a small dancing-master in a holiday suit; but yet he was a King.
At one side of the room, supporting herself by the back of a chair, stood a tall and queenly woman of some sixty years of age. Her natural hair, as white as snow, appeared slightly from beneath the weeds of widowhood, and her striking and beautiful face--beautiful even in sorrow--was pale and worn with long and heavy sickness. The moment the king entered, she advanced towards him, with a step firm and dignified; but she sank upon her knees as she came near, and stretched out her hands towards him, holding what appeared to be a petition.
"Who are you, madam, who are you?" asked the King, in French.
"I am the unhappy Countess of Eskdale, sire," replied the lady, in the same language. "I do beseech you, hear me, and receive my petition for my poor son. Spare him, gracious monarch--spare him, and I pledge--"
She was not permitted to finish the sentence. The cold-hearted King drew back at her first words, and, with a sort of frightened and repulsive look, turned towards a different door from that by which he had entered. But the lady caught him by the skirt of his coat, pleading with all the earnestness of maternal love for her son's life, while he rudely endeavoured to shake himself free, walking with a quick step towards the other side of the room, and literally dragging her after him as she still kept her hold, endeavouring to force the petition upon him.
A gentleman with a cut upon his brow, who had entered with the monarch, now whispered in his ear in French:
"Be firm, sire! Be firm! Shall I remove her?"
The monarch made an eager motion of assent, and the other, casting his arms round Lady Eskdale, tore her away. The paper, which she held in her hand, dropped to the ground; and, instantly rising to her full height, as the monarch passed the door, she turned a look of dignified anger on him who had interposed to prevent the reception of her petition, and exclaimed aloud, in English--