Well, my children, I cannot write what followed, but the end of it was that the post to which Master Richard's hands were tied, and the face of Master-Lieutenant standing behind it, and the wall behind him with the weapons upon it, grew white and frosted to the young man's eyes, and began to toss up and down, and a great roaring sounded in his ears. He thought, he told me afterwards, that he was on Calvary beneath the rood, and that the rocks were rending about him.
So he swooned clean away, and was carried back again to his prison.
* * * * *
Now I learned afterwards that the officer had no authority such as he pretended, but that he had sworn to his fellows that he could find out the truth by a pretence of it, thinking Master Richard to be a poor crazed fool who would cry out and confess at the touch of the whip.
But Master Richard did not cry out for mercy. And I hold that he passed this first trial bravely.
Of the Second Temptation of Master Richard: and how he overcame it
Exacuerunt ut gladium linguas suas: interderunt arcum rem amaram: ut sagittent in occultis immaculatum.
They have whetted their tongues like a sword: they have bent their bow a bitter thing, to shoot in secret the undefiled.—Ps. lxiii, 4, 5.
X
As Master Richard had striven to serve God in the trinity of his nature, so was he to be tried in the trinity of his nature. It was first in his body that he was tempted, by pain and the fear of it; and his second trial came later in the same day—which was in his mind.