BONIFACE.
Had you seen
King Chilperic’s flower-wreathed waggon in the street!—
You should have looked a last time on the world
Ere you renounced it.
CARLOMAN.
Scanned the heir of Clovis
Drawn like a senseless idol in his car!
You judge unworthily. God bade me come
Up higher to Him on a battlefield
Where I was victor. It was in the night—
I moved about among my sleeping men,
I heard them shout for triumph in their dreams:
It was enough!
BONIFACE.
Yes, all is vanity;
The pride of life, its splendour, vanitas!
CARLOMAN.
There is no vanity in life; life utters
Unsparing truth to us,—there is no line
Or record in our body of her printing
That stamps a falsehood. Do not so confound,
Father, life’s transience and sincerity.
What makes the show out in the streets so vile
Is that it blazons forth the lie that youth,
Kingship and power are ineffectual.
A show of death where life should radiate
Is vanity. And if I now fling off
The honourable titles of my state,
Consul and Patriarch, it is not because
I have not nobly borne them; by my sword
The Church has been defended, and the corn
That bows in shocks about your monasteries
Bows down above the battlefields I won.
You misconceive.
BONIFACE.
A sweep of piety
Beyond my censure! [half-aside] Will he thrive at Rome?