"Ha, my friend, where is all your fine philosophy?"
The man cringed like a beggar.
"Where are all your sonorous phrases, your pert blasphemies, your subtleties, your fine tinsel of intellect and vanity?"
Balthasar had no word.
"Where is your godliness, my friend, where your glowing and superhuman soul? Have we found you out, O Satanas; have we shocked your pagan heroism? Be a man. Stand up and face us. You could hold forth roundly on occasions. Even that Saul of Tarsus was not afraid of a sword."
Balthasar cowered, and hid his face behind his hands. He began to whimper, to rock to and fro, to sob. The grim men round him laughed, deep-chested, iron, scoffing laughter. Modred pricked the priest's neck with the point of his sword. It was then that Balthasar fell forward upon his face, senseless from sheer terror.
Flavian abandoned philosophic irony, and addressed himself to Modred and his knights.
"Put up your swords, sirs; this man shall go free."
"Sire, sire!" came the massed cry.
"Trust my discretion. The fellow has done me the greatest service of my life."