"If Your Majesty pleases," said I.
"My Majesty doth not please at all; but he will submit, I suppose. Tell me, sir, why it is that you wish to leave."
"Sir," I said, "the reasons are pretty plain. I have displeased Your Majesty for the past half-year; and I cannot forget that, even though, Sir, you are graciously pleased to compliment me now. Then I have quarrelled with my Cousin Jermyn, so that I have not a kinsman left in England; and—and I have lost her whom I was to make my wife this year. Finally, if more reasons are wanting, I am weary of a world in which I have failed so greatly; and I must go back again to the cloister, if they will have me there."
All came with a rush when I began to speak, for His Majesty's presence had always an extraordinary effect upon me, as upon so many others. I had determined to say very little; yet here I had said it all, and I felt the blood in my face. He listened very patiently to me, with his head a little on one side, and his underlip thrust out, and his great melancholy eyes searching my face.
"Well! well! well," he said again, "if you must be a monk there is no more to be said. But what of your apostleship in the world?"
"Sir," I cried—for I knew what he meant—"my apostleship as you name it has been a greater disaster than all the rest: and God knows that is great enough."
He was silent a full half minute, I should think, still looking on me earnestly.
"Are you so sure of that?" said he.
My heart gave a leap; but he held up his hand before I could speak.
"Wait, sir," he said. "I will tell you this. You have said very little to me; but I vow to you that what you have said I have remembered. It is not argument that a man needs—at least after the first—but example. That you have given me."