“Oh!” exclaimed More, “you whom I venerate as a father and love as a friend—can you doubt for one moment the truth of a heart entirely devoted to you? Confirmed by your example, guided and sustained by your counsels, what have I to fear? Banish from your mind these sad presentiments. Why should this dread of the future, that perhaps after all is only chimerical, destroy the extreme happiness I enjoy in seeing you?”
For a long time they continued to converse, until the light of early morning at length succeeded the uncertain glimmer of the candle, now flickering in its socket.
“My friend, I must leave you,” said Rochester. “The day already dawns. God grant the sun may not this morning arise on the beginning of your misfortunes!”
“Oh! no,” replied More, “this is my fête to-day. S. Thomas will pray for and protect us.”
The good bishop then descended to the courtyard and mounted his mule; but More, unwilling to give him up, walked on by his side as far as the road followed the course of the river. When they reached the cross-road where the bishop turned off, More shook his hand and bade him farewell.
A great wooden cross stood near the roadside, on which was suspended a wreath of withered leaves; and More, seating himself on one of the stone steps upon which the cross was elevated, followed the good bishop with his eyes until he had disappeared in the distance.
He then rested his head sadly on his hands, and recalled to mind all this venerable friend had said to him.
“He is right!” he mentally exclaimed. “How clear-sighted his friendship renders him! Into what a sea of agitation, malignity, and hatred I shall be plunged! And all for what? In order that I may be lord chancellor of the kingdom through which this road passes. Behold, then, beside the highway,” he added, looking around him, “my lord the great high chancellor, shivering in the cold morning air just as any other man would do who had gone out at this hour without putting on his cloak!… Yes, I can understand how social distinctions might cause us to scorn other men, if they exempted us from the inconveniences of life. We might then perhaps believe that we had different natures. But let us change our garments, and we fall at once, and are immediately confounded with the common herd.”
While making these sad reflections upon the follies of human nature, More arose and returned to the house, where his wife and children and his aged father—simple and peaceable old man, happy in the favor of the king and the virtues of his son—were all wrapped in profound slumber.
In a spacious apartment, of which the dark and worm-eaten ceiling, ragged tapestry, and dilapidated windows presented the appearance of a desolate and abandoned edifice, a fragment of broken furniture still remained, upon which was placed a small piece of bread. Numberless crumbs strewed the dusty floor and were eagerly devoured by a little mouse, but recently the only inhabitant of the place. To-day, however, he had the company of a man whose extraordinary mind had conceived vast projects and executed great and useful enterprises—the Archbishop of York, Cardinal Wolsey. Seated upon the edge of a wooden stool which he had placed in the embrasure of a window, he held his hands crossed one upon the other, and bitterly reflected upon his unhappy destiny. Regrets, of which he felt all the impotency, pressed upon his agitated soul. It seemed to him that he still heard the cries and menaces of the furious populace that exulted in his distress, and to which perhaps, alas! he would again be subjected. At one time filled with courage and resolution, at another humble and cast down, the anxieties of his mind seemed wholly without measure. His eyes, wearied with straying listlessly over the plain which extended before him, beheld only a single laborer ploughing the field. “Man is small,” said he, “in presence of immensity; the point which he forms in space is imperceptible. Entire generations have passed away, have gathered the fruits of the earth, and now sleep in their native dust. My name has been unknown to them. Millions of creatures suffer, where I exist free from pain. Coming up from the lowest ranks of society, I have endeavored to elevate myself above them. And what has my existence signified to them? Has not each one considered himself the common centre around which all the others must revolve?”