JOSHUA.
I must leave you here, my good friends. It is midnight, and I must go back to my post of turnkey of the Tower of London. I am not as free as you are, you see! A turnkey is only another kind of prisoner! Good-by, Jane! Good-by, Gilbert. Ah, my friends, how glad I am to see you happy! When is the wedding, Gilbert?
GILBERT.
In one week, isn't it, Jane?
JOSHUA.
Faith! day after to-morrow is Christmas. This is the day of good wishes and presents. But I have nothing to wish you. It would be impossible to wish more beauty to the bride or more love to the bridegroom. You are fortunate.
GILBERT.
Good Joshua! And you, are you not happy?
JOSHUA.
Neither happy nor unhappy. As for me, I have given up everything. Look you, Gilbert [opening his cloak and disclosing a bunch of keys hanging to his belt], prison keys always jingling at your side, talk to you, suggest all sorts of philosophical ideas to you. When I was young, I was like the rest—in love for a day, ambitious for a month, mad a whole year. It was during the reign of Henry VIII. that I was young. Strange man that Henry VIII.! A man who changed his wives as a woman changes her dresses. He repudiated the first, had the second beheaded, had the third's womb cut open; as for the fourth, he had mercy on her—he sent her off; but for revenge he had the fifth's head cut off! This isn't the story of Bluebeard I am telling you, my beautiful Jane; it is the history of Henry VIII. In those days I interested myself in the religious wars; I fought first for one side and then for the other. That was the wisest thing to do. The whole business was very ticklish. It was whether to be for or against the Pope. The King's officers hanged those who were for, but they burned those who were against. The neutral people—those who neither were for nor against—they hanged them or they burned them indiscriminately. We managed as we could. Yes, the rope; no, the fagot. I, who am speaking to you, I smelled of burning very often, and I am not sure that I was not un-hanged two or three times. Those were great times; very much like the times now. The devil take me if I know now whom I fought for or what I fought about. If people speak to me now about Master Luther and Pope Paul III., I shrug my shoulders. You see, Gilbert, when a man has gray hairs he shouldn't go back to the opinions he fought for nor the women he loved when he was twenty. The women and the opinions will seem very ugly, very old, very paltry, very silly, very much wrinkled and out of date. Such is my history. Now I am through with public affairs. I am no longer the King's soldier nor the Pope's soldier; I am jailer of the Tower of London. I don't fight any more for anybody, and I put everybody under lock and key. I am turnkey and I am old. I have one foot in a prison and the other in the grave. I am the one who picks up the remnants of all the ministers and favorites who go to pieces in the Queen's palace. It is very amusing. I have also a little child whom I love, and you both whom I love too; and if you are happy, I am happy also.