“Fie, fie, for shame, for shame!” said the General; “can a white-bearded man, I ask it once more, be a false witness?”
“Faith, sir,” said Sir Henry Lee, “it is a thriving trade, and I wonder not that you who live on it are so severe in prosecuting interlopers. But it is the times, and those who rule the times, that make grey-beards deceivers.”
“Thou art facetious friend, as well as daring in thy malignity,” said Cromwell; “but credit me, I will cry quittance with you ere I am done. Whereunto lead these doors?”
“To bedrooms,” answered the knight.
“Bedrooms! only to bedrooms?” said the Republican General, in a voice which indicated such was the internal occupation of his thoughts, that he had not fully understood the answer.
“Lord, sir,” said the knight, “why should you make it so strange? I say these doors lead to bedrooms—to places where honest men sleep, and rogues lie awake.”
“You are running up a farther account, Sir Henry,” said the General; “but we will balance it once and for all.”
During the whole of the scene, Cromwell, whatever might be the internal uncertainty of his mind, maintained the most strict temperance in language and manner, just as if he had no farther interest in what was passing, than as a military man employed in discharging the duty enjoined him by his superiors. But the restraint upon his passion was but
“The torrent’s smoothness ere it dash below.”[[1]]
[1] But mortal pleasure, what art thou in truth?
The torrent’s smoothness ere it dash, below.
CAMPBELL’S Gertrude of Wyoming.