“Sire,” replied Cromwell vehemently, “you speak of discords and fears for the future; I should be wanting in courage if I withheld the truth from the king. More and Rochester—these are the men who censure and injure you in the estimation of your people. There are proofs against them, but they are moral proofs, and insufficient for rigid justice to act upon. They refuse to take the oath, and it is impossible to include them in the judgment against the Holy Maid of Kent. They would be acquitted unanimously. However, you have heard it from her own lips. You know that she is acquainted with them, has spoken to them; this she has declared in presence of your majesty. They were in the church; she had let them know she was to appear at that hour. Well, it is impossible to prove anything against them; they will be justified, elated, and triumphant. Parliament, reassured, encouraged by this example of tenacity and rebellion, will recover from the first fright with which the terror of your name had inspired them. They will raise their heads; your authority will be despised; they will rise against you; they will resist you on every side, and compel you to recall Queen Catherine back to this palace, adorned by the presence of your young wife. And then what shame, what humiliation for you, and what a triumph for her! And this is why, sire, I have not been able to sleep one moment last night, and why I am the first to enter the palace this morning, where I expected to wait until your majesty
awoke. But,” he continued, “zeal for your glory carries me, perhaps, too far. Well then you will punish me, and I shall not murmur.”
“Recall Catherine!” cried the king, who, after this name, had not heard a syllable of Cromwell’s discourse; and he clenched his fists with a contraction of inexpressible fury. “Recall Catherine, after having driven her out in the face of all justice, of all honor! No, I shall have to drink to the dregs this bitter cup I have poured out for myself; and coming ages will for ever resound with the infamy of my name. Though the earth should open, though the heavens should fall and crush me, yet Thomas More shall die! Go, Cromwell,” he cried, his eyes gleaming with fury; “let him swear or let him die! Go, worthy messenger of a horrible crime; get thee from before my eyes. It is you who have launched me upon this ocean, where I can sustain myself only by blood. Cursed be the day when you first crossed my sight, infamous favorite of the most cruel of masters! Go, go! and bring me the head of my friend, of the only man I esteem, whom I still venerate, and let there no longer remain aught but monsters in this place.”
Cromwell recoiled. “Infamous favorite!” he repeated to himself. “May I but be able one day to avenge myself for the humiliations with which you have loaded me, and may I see in my turn remorse tear your heart, and the anger of God punish the crimes I have aided you in committing!” He departed.
Henry VIII. was stifled with rage. He crushed under his foot the upholsterer’s memorandum; he opened a window and walked out on the balcony, from whence the
view extended far beyond the limits of the city. As he advanced, he was struck by the soft odor and freshness which was exhaled by the morning breeze from a multitude of flowers and plants placed there. He stooped down to examine them, then leaned upon the heavy stone balustrade, polished and carved like lace, and looked beyond in the distance.
The immense movement of an entire population began in every direction. There was the market, whither flocked the dealers, the country people, and the diligent and industrious housewives. Farther on was the wharf, where the activity was not less; soldiers of the marine, cabin boys, sailors, ship-builders, captains—all were hurrying thither. Troops of workmen were going to their work on the docks, with tools in hand and their bread under their arms. The windows of the rich alone remained closed to the light of day, to the noise and the busy stir without. There they rolled casks; here they transported rough stones, plaster, and carpenter’s timber. Horses pulled, whips cracked—in a word, the entire city was aroused; every minute the noise increased and the activity redoubled.
“These men are like a swarm of bees in disorder,” said Henry VIII.; “and yet they carry tranquil minds to their work, while their king is suffering the keenest tortures in the midst of them; yet is there not one of them who, in looking at this palace, does not set at the summit of happiness him who reigns and commands here. ‘If I were king!’ say this ignorant crowd when they wish to express the idea of happiness and supreme enjoyment of the will. Do they know what it costs the king to accomplish
that will? Why do I not belong to their sphere? I should at least spend my days in the same state of indifference in which they sleep, live, and die. They are miserable, say they; what have they to make them miserable? They are never sure of bread, they reply; but do they know what it is to be satiated with abundance and devoured by insatiable desires? Then death threatens us and ends everything—that terrible judgment when kings will be set apart, to be interrogated and punished more severely. More, the recollection of your words, your counsel, has never ceased to live in my mind. Had I but taken your advice, if I had sent Anne away, to-day I should have been free and thought no more of her; while now, regarded with horror by the universe, I hate the whole world. But let me drown these thoughts. I want wine—drunkenness and oblivion.” And pronouncing these words, he rushed suddenly from the balcony and disappeared.
In the depths of his narrow prison there was another also who had sought to catch a breath of the exhilarating air with which the dawn of a beautiful day had reanimated the universe. It was not upon a balustrade of roses and perfumes that he leaned, but upon a miserable, worm-eaten table, blackened by time, and discolored by the tears with which for centuries it had been watered. It was not a powerful city, a people rich, industrious, and submissive, that his eyes were fixed upon, but the sombre bars of a small, grated window, whose solitary pane he had opened.