“And Thane of Cawdor, too, went it not so?” he asked, with a half-assumed air of incredulity.
“To the self-same tune and words,” said Banquo.
The mysterious greeting of the witches now received strange confirmation, for messengers arrived from King Duncan, bringing news that the Thane of Cawdor had been condemned to death for treason, and that his title and estate were conferred on Macbeth. Such an instant proof of the witches’ powers of divination could not fail to fill Macbeth’s mind with strange imaginings.
“Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor!” he murmured to himself. “The greatest is behind.” Then he spoke to Banquo apart: “Do you not hope your children shall be Kings, when those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me promised no less to them?”
But Banquo’s nature was less easily carried away than Macbeth’s. He warned him that it was dangerous to put any trust in doers of evil; often to win people to their harm they would tell truth in trifles, in order to betray them in matters of the deepest consequence.
Macbeth scarcely paid any attention to what Banquo said. His thoughts were fixed now on one idea. The witches had foretold truly that he should be Thane of Cawdor when there seemed no likelihood of such an event taking place. Why, then, should they not have spoken equal truth when they foretold a higher honour?
A dreadful idea was already beginning to take shape in Macbeth’s mind. At first he shrank from it in horror, but again and again it came back with renewed force. At last he tried resolutely to thrust it from him.
“If chance will have me King, why, chance may crown me, without my stir,” he said to himself. Then, with the feeling that he would leave events to work out as fate chose, he added: “Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
But even yet he could not put the matter from him, and determine to think no more about it, as a wise man would have done. He wanted to reflect over what had passed, and discuss it again with Banquo.
“Let us go to the King,” he said to Banquo; for the messengers had come to summon him to Duncan, in order to receive his thanks for the victory. “We will think over what has chanced, and later on, having in the meanwhile pondered it, let us speak our hearts freely to each other.”