“Yes, pardon, pardon!” repeated Margaret, frenzied and wandering. “They have granted his pardon, I assure you. Pierre Gilles has been to Hampton Court to find that woman. Roper, is it not so? Roper, I am dying; take me away.” And she grew pale and seemed ready to faint. Three or four hands were immediately advanced to sustain her; but Roper would not suffer them to touch her, and, raising her in his arms, he asked them to make way for him to lead her out of the crowd and from the place. The crowd opened with respect, and he assisted Margaret to the same place where she had passed the night awaiting, with her eyes fixed on the horizon, the terrible day which was to remove her for ever from her father.
“It is daylight, daylight,” said Margaret. “Yonder, Roper! And when night comes on, he will be
already cold in death! O Roper! all this in one day. William, give him back to me! What have they done with him? Oh! no, he will not die. He is going to the king!”
She kept her eyes fast closed, and poor Roper regarded her with anxiety.
“They have forced him away! You know the place where the soldiers have taken him. I have seen it—I have seen everything. But that was yesterday, Roper. I have lost my reason,” she suddenly exclaimed, opening her eyes, filled with terror. “Tell me, where is he? They will let me bury his body, will they not? I will kiss his face, I will embalm him; and you will bury me beside him, will you not, Roper? They will not leave it on the bridge—that head; I will remain on my knees until they give it to me! O Heaven! dost thou hear—dost thou hear the cries of the people? All is ended; the crime is consummated! My father has left the earth! Roper, let us go to the church; I want to pray—to pray until eternity!”
Alas! Margaret spoke truly. Arriving at the scaffold, More, after having embraced the executioner and given him a gold angel in token of forgiveness, was beheaded by the same axe, upon the very block on which the head of his friend Rochester had fallen a few hours before.
Thus perished these two illustrious men, the glory and honor of England. Thus began the cruel schism which since then has torn so many children from the church, separated a great number of Christians from the common trunk, and deprived, in the course of centuries, so many souls of the knowledge of the eternal and indivisible truth.
And now, when old England unrolls before the eyes of the eager
explorer of the past the long list of her kings, she places one of her fingers upon the bloody diadem which encircles the brow of Henry VIII., and with the other she points out to the moved heart the spot where, their dust mingled together, sleep within the walls of her most ancient fortress the victims of the fury of this king. For she also, that first cause of so many woes—the young Anne Boleyn, so proud of her fatal beauty—passed from the throne to the scaffold at the very moment when Catherine was dying of misery, pain, and neglect in the depths of an obscure city. The odious Cromwell, who had guided her to that scaffold, was not long in following her, and his ignoble blood was at last brought to expiate in the same place that of the illustrious More.
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