“He may not, as you say,” replied Sir Thomas; “but he will exercise it nevertheless, and at least I shall not have to reproach myself with having contributed to it. Oh! no,” he continued, “no; and I am happy to shed my blood in testimony of this truth. For listen, Master Pope: I have not sacrificed twenty years of my life in the service of the state without having studied what were her true interests, and consequently those of society, which is at the same time her foundation and support; and I declare to you that I have recognized and am thoroughly convinced that the Catholic religion, the realization of the figurative and prophetic law given to the Jews, the development and complete perfection of the natural law, can alone be the foundation of a prosperous and happy society, because it alone possesses the highest degree of morals possible to attain; it alone bears fruit in the heart; it alone can restrain, and is able even to destroy, that selfishness, natural to man, which leads him to sacrifice everything to his desires and gratifications—a selfishness which, abandoned to itself and carried to its greatest length, renders all social order impossible, and transforms men into a crowd of enraged enemies bent on mutual destruction.
“All that tends to disrupt, then, all that would alter or attack, this excellent religion, is a mortal blow
aimed at the country and its citizens, and necessarily tends to deprive them of that which ensures their dignity, their safety, their happiness, their hopes, and their future. Look around you at the universe, and behold on its surface the people of those unhappy countries where the light of the Catholic faith has been extinguished or has not yet been kindled. Study their governments, and behold in them the most monstrous despotisms, where blood flows like water, and the life of man is considered of less value than that of the frivolous animal which amuses him. Read the cruel laws their ferocity has dictated; learn the still more crying acts of injustice they commit, and how they pursue, as with a tearing lash, those whose weakness and stupidity have delivered them up as slaves; tremble at the recital of the tortures and barbarities they inflict before death, to which they condemn their victims without appeal as without investigation; behold the arts, spiritual affection, sublime poesy, perish there; ignorance, instability, misery, and terror succeed them, and reign without interruption and without restraint. Ah! these noble ideas of right, of justice, of order and humanity, which govern us, and ensure among us the triumph of the incredulous and proud philosopher, which makes him say and think that they alone are sufficient for society—he perceives not, blind as he is, that these are prizes in the hand of religion, who, extends them to him, and that, if he speaks like her, she speaks still better than he. I do not say—no, I do not say—that we will fall as low as the Turk, the Indian, or the American savage. So long as one glimmer of the Gospel, one souvenir of its maxims, shall remain standing in the midst
of us, we will not lose all that we have received since our ancestors came out of the forests where they wandered, subsisting on the flesh of wild animals; but we will begin to recede from the truth, we will cover it with clouds; they will become darker and darker, and soon, if we still go on, it will be no longer with a firm and resolute step, but rather like gloomy travellers wandering in a vast desert without a breath of air or a drop of water.”
Pope listened to Sir Thomas without daring to interrupt him, and felt his heart touched by what he said. For this admirable man possessed the faculty of attracting all who saw him immediately toward him; and when they heard him speak, the strength, the justness of his thoughts and his arguments penetrated little by little into their minds, until, almost without perceiving it, they found themselves entirely changed, and astonished to feel that they were of the same opinion as himself.
Pope leaned against a stool which was there, and remained very thoughtful; for he had taken the oath himself, without dreaming that it could result in such serious consequences. Neither his convictions, however, nor his courage were such as would make him desire to give his life for the truth; but he could not refrain from admiring this devotion in the illustrious man before him. He looked at him without speaking, and seemed entirely confounded.
Mistaking the cause, and seeing him abstracted and silent, Sir Thomas supposed the conversation had wearied Pope; he therefore ceased speaking, and, taking up the death-warrant, he read it a second time. At the end his eyes filled with tears and his sight grew dim.
“It is, then, fixed for to-morrow!” he exclaimed—“to-morrow morning. One night only! Oh! how I wish they would permit me to write to Erasmus.[143] Pope,” said he, “shall I not be permitted to see once more, for the last time, my dearly-beloved daughter? I fear that she may be still in the city. I would like her to be sent away—that Roper should take her. Ah! Master Pope, it is not the riches or honors of this world which are difficult to sacrifice, but the affections of the heart, of the soul that lives within us, which is entirely ourselves, without which the rest is nothing.” And he again relapsed into silence.
“I do not think you will be able to see her,” said Pope, replying to the question of Sir Thomas; “and—even—” he added with painful hesitation, “I am also charged to ask you not to make any remarks to the people on the scaffold. The king hath expressly so willed, and then he will permit your wife and children to assist at your interment.”
“Ah!” replied Sir Thomas, “I thank his majesty for manifesting so much solicitude about my poor interment; but it matters little where these miserable bones be laid when I have abandoned them. God, who has made them out of nothing, will be able to find the ashes and recall them a second time into being when it shall please him to restore them to that indestructible life which he has so graciously vouchsafed to promise them.”