Chapter VII: An Unexpected Proposal (4)

A domed chapel, protected by a balustrade of alabaster, has been built on the east side of the church, in which is enshrined the head of St. Catharine――evidently the most frequented part of the church, from the numerous seats before it, mostly with coats of arms and carved backs. Framed prayers, as is common in Italy, are chained to a _prie-Dieu_――one to St. Catherine with the anthem: _Regnum mundi et omnem ornatum sæculi contempsi propter amorem Domini mei Jesu Christi, quem vidi, quem amavi, in quem credidi, quem dilexi_. Three lamps were burning before the relics of St. Catharine. The walls are covered with exquisite paintings by Sodoma, which were lit up by the morning sun. Nothing could be more lovely than St. Catharine swooning at the Saviour’s apparition――a figure full of divine languor, grace, and softness. Two nuns tenderly sustain her. Her stigmata are radiant. An angel bears a lily. The whole painting is delicate, ethereal, and heavenly as a vision. It is on the gospel side of the altar; on the other side she kneels between two nuns with her eyes raised to heaven, where, above the Virgin and Child, appears the _Padre Eterno_. Angels bear the cross and crown of thorns. Another brings the Host. A death’s head and lily are at her feet. The whole is of wonderful beauty.

On the left wall, as you enter the chapel, is painted the execution of a young knight, beheaded at Siena for some slight political offence. St. Catharine went to comfort him in his despair, and induced him to receive the sacraments. She even accompanied him to the block, where his last words were “Jesus” and “Catharine,” leaving her inundated with his blood, but in a state of ecstasy that rendered her insensible to everything but his eternal welfare. The odor of his blood seemed to intoxicate her. She could not resolve to wash it off. She only saw his soul ransomed by the blood of the Lamb, and, in describing her state of mind to her confessor, she cries: “Yes, bathe in the Blood of Christ crucified, feast on this Blood, be inebriated with this Blood, weep in Blood, rejoice in Blood, grow strong in this Blood, then, like an intrepid knight, hasten through this Blood to defend the honor of God, the liberty of the church, and the salvation of souls.” Her letters often begin: “I, Catharine, servant and slave of Jesus Christ, write you in his precious Blood,” as if it was there she derived all her strength and inspiration. In the picture before us nothing could be more peaceful than the face of the young knight just beheaded, whose soul two beautiful angels are bearing to heaven.

On the pavement is traced in the marble Adam amid the animals in Paradise, among whom is the unicorn, the ancient emblem of chastity.

At the extreme end of the church is the Chapel delle Volte, to which you ascend by six steps. Over the door is this inscription:

En locus hic toto sacer | et venerabile orbe,
Hic Sponsũ Catharina suum | sanctissima sepe,
Vidit ovans Christum | dictu mirabile, sed tu
Quisquies ades hic funde | preces venerare beatam
Stigmata gestantem | Divini insignia amoris;――

Behold this place, sacred and venerable among all on earth; here holy Catharine rejoicing often beheld, wondrous to say, the Christ, her spouse. But thou, whosoever approachest, here pour forth thy prayers, to venerate the holy one who bore the sacred stigmata, the insignia of divine love.

This chapel, the scene of so many of St. Catharine’s mystic visions, is long and narrow, with one window. The arches are strewn with gilt stars on a blue ground. The floor is paved with tiles, with tablets here and there. On one, before the altar, are the words: _Cathâ. cor mutat XPUS_――Christ changes the heart of Catharine; for it was here she underwent that miraculous change of heart which transformed her life. Our Saviour himself appeared to her, surrounded by light, and gave her a new heart, which filled her with ecstatic joy, and inspired a love for all mankind.

Over the plain altar is an authentic portrait of St. Catharine by the poetic Andrea Vanni, a pupil of Sano di Pietro. He was one of her disciples and correspondents, though a _Capitano del Popolo_. He painted this portrait in 1367, while she was in an ecstatic state in this very chapel. It represents her with delicate features, a thin, worn face, and must have been a charming picture originally, but it is now greatly deteriorated.

On one of the pillars of the chapel is the inscription: _Catâ. cruce erogat XPO_――Catharine bestows the cross on Christ; referring to the silver cross she one day gave a beggar in this church, which was afterwards shown her set with precious stones. And on another pillar is: _Catâ. vesti induit XPUM_――Catharine clothes Christ with her garment; in memory of the tunic she here gave our Saviour under the form of a beggar, who showed it to her some hours after, radiant with light and embroidered with pearls――acts of charity full of significance. Three lovely little paintings by Beccafumi, at the Belle Arti, represent the three mystic scenes commemorated in this chapel.

In the adjoining convent, now a school-house, lived for a time St. Thomas of Aquin and the Blessed Ambrogio Sansedoni, whose tomb is in the cloister. Here, in 1462, was held a chapter of fifteen hundred Dominicans, and here Pius II. blessed the standard of the Crusaders.

On our way to the Porta Camollia we turned down at the left, by a steep, paved way, to the church of Fonte Giusta, erected in memory of a victory over the Florentines. It is a small brick church with four small windows, four pillars to which are attached four bronze angels holding four bronze candlesticks, and on the walls hang four paintings of note. One is a beautiful coronation of the Virgin with four saints, by Fungai. Then there is a Visitation by Anselmi, in which two majestic women look into each other’s eyes, as if to fathom each the other’s soul. In an arch of the right aisle is the sibyl of Peruzzi――a noble figure――said to have been studied by Raphael when Agostino Chigi, the famous banker of the Farnesina palace (a Sienese by birth), commissioned him to paint the celebrated sibyls of the _Della Pace_ at Rome――sibyls that have all the grandeur of Michael Angelo, and the grace that Raphael alone could give.

But what particularly brought us to this church was to see the Madonna of Fonte Giusta, to which Columbus made a pilgrimage after the discovery of America, and presented his sword, shield (a round one), and a whale’s bone, which are still suspended over the entrance. The Madonna turns her fair, sweet face towards you, while the Child has his eyes turned towards his mother, with his hands crossed on his breast. Both have on silver crowns, and pearls around their necks. The picture is in a frame of cherubs’ heads, surrounded by delicate arabesques. Beneath is the inscription:

Hic requies tranquilla,
Salus hic dulce levamen:
Hic est spes miseris ꝕsidiũq reis――

Here is tranquil repose; here safety and sweet consolation; here is hope for the wretched, and for the guilty an unfailing refuge.

Columbus’ devotion to the Blessed Virgin is well known. It was under her auspices he undertook, in a vessel called by her name, the discovery of a new world. He daily said her office on board ship from a valuable MS. given him by Alexander VI. before his departure and afterwards bequeathed to Genoa, and the _Salve Regina_ was sung every evening by his followers.

Porta Camollia is not remarkable in an architectural point of view, but it has its sacred associations. It was here St. Bernardin of Siena used to come every night, when a boy, to pray before the tutelar Madonna of the gate. His aunt, hearing him speak of going to see the fairest of women, followed him at a distance one night and discovered his secret.

The chapel of the Confraternity of San Bernardin is a museum of art. The walls are covered with fine frescoes of the life of the Virgin by Beccafumi, Sodoma, and Pacchia. One of the most beautiful is Sodoma’s “Assumption,” in which Mary――_pulchra ut luna_――in a mantle like a violet cloud, is borne up to her native heaven by angels full of grace. The apostles, with thoughtful, devout, but not astonished faces, stand around the tomb, out of which rise two tall lilies amid the white roses. St. Thomas lifts his hands to receive the sacred girdle.

Everywhere about this chapel is the sacred monogram so dear to San Bernardin. The holy name of Jesus is inscribed on the front, on the holy-water basin, on the walls; placed there in more devout times, when even genius sought to

“Embalm his sacred name
With all a painter’s art and all a minstrel’s flame.”

There are more than sixty churches and chapels at Siena, but perhaps not one without some work of art that is noteworthy. Siena was the cradle of art in the thirteenth century, and has its aureola of artists as well as of saints. The school of Florence only dates from the fourteenth century. Guido da Siena, Bonamico, and Diotisalvi were the glorious precursors of Cimabue, and Simone Memmi, a century later, shared with Giotto the friendship and admiration of Petrarch.

“_Ma certò il mio Simon fû in Paradiso._”

The old Sienese artists were profoundly religious. In their statutes of 1355 they say: “We, by the grace of God, make manifest to rude and ignorant men the miraculous events operated by virtue, and in confirmation, of our holy faith.” The efflorescence of the arts is one of the expressions of a profound faith. We have only to visit the galleries of Italy, filled with the sad spoils of numberless churches and convents, to be convinced of this. And there is not a tomb of a saint of the middle ages out of which does not bloom some flower of art, fair as the lilies that spring from the sepulchre of the Virgin. What wreaths of art entwine the tombs of St. Francis, St. Dominic, and St. Antony of Padua!

The collection of paintings at the Academy of Siena is very interesting. Here Beccafumi represents St. Catharine receiving the stigmata. She is in soft, gray robes, with a lovely face, kneeling before a crucifix under an archway, through which you see the landscape. A dead, thorny tree is behind her. By way of contrast to her beauty and grace is the austere St. Jerome, haggard and worn, with his lion, before one of the pillars of the arch. At the other is a Dominican in black and white garments. Above are the Madonna and Child attended by angels. The whole picture is very soft and charming.

Sodoma has also here a St. Catharine with a delicate, thoughtful face, and a crucifix in her pierced hands.

Perhaps the most striking picture in the gallery is Sodoma’s “Christ Bound,” which is wonderful in expression. The face and form are very human and of grand development. From under the crown of thorns flows the long, amber hair. The eyes are sad, inexpressibly sad, and the bleeding form is infinitely pathetic. “It is a thing to stand and weep at,” says Hawthorne.

“I suffer binding who have loosed their bands.
Was ever grief like mine?”

Sodoma’s “Judith,” in a blue dress and orange mantle, stands beside a leafless tree, holding up the bloody knife with one hand, and the head of Holofernes with the other. She has a gleaming jewel on her forehead, though the old rabbis represent her with a wreath of lilies, believed by the ancients to be a protection against witchcraft and peril.

The university of Siena existed in the thirteenth century. Among its noted members was Cisto da Siena, a Jew, who became a Catholic and a monk, and finally a Calvinist. Condemned to death for his apostasy, he was indebted for his life to the friendship of Pope Julius III. and Cardinal Ghislieri, afterwards Pius V.

M. Taine speaks of the deplorable ignorance of the present Sienese, and says there is no library, not a book, in the place.[109] As he seems, by his journal, to have been there only two days, he probably, like many travellers, noted down his preconceived opinion. The library of Siena, one of the oldest in Italy, has always been famous. It was founded by Niccolo Oliva, an Augustinian friar, and contains fifty thousand volumes――a respectable number for an inland town. About seven hundred belong to the very first age of printing. There are also five thousand manuscripts, among which are a Greek Gospel of the tenth century that came from the imperial chapel at Constantinople, bound in silver, and many other rare MSS. and documents, such as the original will (in Latin) of Boccaccio, and autograph writings of Metastasio, St. Catharine, and St. Bernardin.

Siena has several charitable institutions. The asylum for deaf mutes, founded by Padre Pendola is spacious and agreeable. The great hospital della Scala, opposite the cathedral, founded by Fra Sorore, is one of the most ancient in Italy. It is vast and sunny, with a fine view over the valley around Siena. Its atmosphere is thoroughly religious, with its walls frescoed by the old masters, its numerous altars and religious emblems. St. Catharine used to come here to attend the sick. It is now served by Sisters of Charity.

It is dreadful to say, but the first glimpse we had of the Duomo, with its striped wall of black and white marble, reminded us of good old Sarah Battles――“now with God”――and her cribbage-board, which Charles Lamb tells us was made of the finest Sienese marble, and brought by her uncle from Italy. But on coming nearer to it every trivial thought vanishes before its grandeur and expressive richness of detail. The impression it makes on the mind is so profound, M. Taine says, that “what we feel on entering St. Peter’s at Rome cannot be compared to it.” He calls it “a most admirable Gothic flower, but of a new species that has blossomed in a more propitious clime, the production of minds of greater cultivation and genius, more serene, more beautiful, more religious, and yet healthy; and which is to the cathedrals of France what the poems of Dante and Petrarch are to the _chansons_ of the French _trouvères_.”

On the pavement before the entrance is represented the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican who went up into the Temple to pray――a lesson to ponder over as we enter the house of prayer. The façade is of marvellous workmanship. Amid angels and prophets and symbolic sculpture, delicate as lace-work, are St. Ansano, St. Catharine, and San Bernardin――the special patrons of Siena. On entering the church you are at first dazzled by its richness. The pavement is unrivalled in the world, with its pictures in niello, by an art now lost, where we find page after page from the Scriptures, some written by the powerful hand of Beccafumi, whose cartoons are to be seen at the Belle Arti; sibyls noble as goddesses; Trismegistus, who received his knowledge from Zoroaster, offering the Pimandra in which is written: “The God who created all things, the maker of the earth and starry heavens, so greatly loved his Son that he made him his Holy Word”; and Socrates climbing the mountain of Virtue, who sits on its summit, holding forth a palm to him, while with the other hand she offers the book of wisdom to Crates, who empties a casket of jewels to receive it. The walls are covered with paintings, by Duccio, of twenty-six scenes of the Passion, full of life and power, dramatic and yet strictly Scriptural, forming a book one is never weary of studying as Christian or artist. The stalls by Fra Giovanni, the Olivetan monk, are the very perfection of intarsia work, which here, as Marchese says, “almost rises to the dignity of painting.” The wondrous pulpit, with its nine columns resting on lions, its sides covered with scenes from the life of Christ by Nicholas of Pisa, and the seven sciences on the central octagonal pillar, is a prodigy of richness and elegance.

The frieze around the nave is adorned with the heads of the popes down to Alexander III. Among these, strange to say, was once Pope Joan, such hold had that popular error on the public mind. It was Florimond de Raymond, a counsellor of the parliament of Bordeaux, and a friend of Montaigne and Justus Lipsius, who, in the sixteenth century, protested against such an insult to the Papacy, and by his efforts had it effaced. He wrote to the Sovereign Pontiff himself: “Avenge the injury done to your predecessors. Order this monster to be removed from the place where Satan, the father of lies, has had it set up. Do not suffer an image to remain of that which never existed. If there was no body, let there be no shadow”; and he calls upon the pope to destroy this idol, raised to the disgrace of the church. Besides this, he wrote a book, now rare, completely exploding the fable, showing by incontestable documents there was not the least place for Joan in the succession of popes. This work, together with his appeal, produced such an effect as to procure the removal of her portrait from the cathedral of Siena. The illustrious Cardinal Baronius wrote to him in 1600 that it had just been removed by order of the Grand Duke of Tuscany according to his wishes, and he congratulated him in magnificent terms on such a triumph.

On an altar in the left nave is the crucifix borne by the Sienese at the battle of Monte Aperti, and beneath the arches are still suspended, after so many centuries, the long flag-poles captured from the Florentines Sept. 4, 1260, the most glorious day in the history of Siena.

At the right is the chapel of the Madonna del Voto, built by Alexander VII., a Sienese pope (Fabio Chigi), with its Byzantine-looking Virgin amid paintings, bronzes, mosaics, and precious stones.

The family of Piccolomini is glorified in this church. To it belonged the great Æneas Silvius, as well as Pius III., also a lover of the arts, and Ascanio Piccolomini, Archbishop of Siena, a friend of Galileo, to whom he gave hospitality when he came forth from what people are pleased to call the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome――that is, from pleasant apartments in the delightful palace of the Tuscan ambassador on the Trinità de’ Monti, now the French Academy. The Piccolomini chapel has five statues sculptured by Michael Angelo, and the beautiful hall, known as the Library, is world-famous for its frescoes of the life of Pius II. by Pinturicchio.

The whole church is a temple of art, with its sculptured altar, its bronze tabernacle, its rare paintings, its beautiful pillars of differently-colored marbles, and its rich windows of stained glass. Nothing could be more serene and calm than the atmosphere of this glorious church. Amid the sacred silence, the struggling light, with the grandest symbols of religion on every side, you feel lifted for a moment out of your own mean imprisonments into a very heaven of art and piety.

[108] Behold, O Lord! thy flock surrounded by wolves eager
to devour it. Behold all the honor of Italy spent, because
its Chief Pastor sojourns in a foreign land.

[109] “_Point de bibliothèque: aucun livre_,” are his words.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

XVI.

Whilst Margaret and Pierre Gilles were thus conversing, above their heads, in a magnificent gallery flashing with gilt, and adorned with portraits of all the archbishops who had occupied this palace, destined for their residence, the court had assembled, and there the jury was called which was to try, or rather to condemn, Sir Thomas More.

At the extremity of this hall, upon an elevated platform all covered with carpet and fringe, were seated the new lord chancellor, Thomas Audley; near him, Sir John Fitz-James, Lord Chief-Justice; and beyond, Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; the Duke of Norfolk, several lords of the Privy Council, among them the Duke of Suffolk, the Abbot of Westminster, and Cromwell, who on this occasion acted as secretary. To the left of the court, and near the jury, was seated Richard Rich, the creature of Cromwell, and his worthy associate, newly appointed, on account of his efficient services, solicitor-general.

“Sir Thomas Palmer, knight?” said the clerk. “Sir Thomas Peint, knight? George Lowell, esquire? Thomas Burbage, esquire? Geoffrey Chamber, gentleman? Edward Stockmore, gentleman? Joseph Leake, gentleman? William Brown, gentleman? Thomas Bellington, gentleman? John Parnell, gentleman? Richard Bellam, gentleman? George Stokes, gentleman?”

All responded to their names.

“Sir Thomas More,” said the lord chancellor, in a slow and hard tone, “do you challenge any one of these gentlemen of the jury?”

“No, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, who was standing up before the court, leaning upon a cane he held in his hand, and which had been of great assistance to him during the long sessions he had already been obliged to endure in that fatiguing and inconvenient position. Meanwhile, he anxiously watched the door through which the accused entered, and was uneasy at not seeing the Bishop of Rochester; for they met only in court, and it was a moment of relief when he beheld his friend near him, although he every day remarked with sadness that Rochester was failing in a lamentable manner.

“The accused challenges none of the members of the jury,” proclaimed the lord chief-justice. He then arose, and began to recite the formula of the oath to be taken by each member of the jury.

“Now, Sir Thomas,” said the chancellor, “I desire to address you yet a last observation, and I wish with all my heart that you may yield to it; because the king, not having forgotten your long services, is deeply grieved at the perilous position in which your obstinacy, too evidently the result of malice, has placed you. He has ordered us to unbend again, and for the last time, so far as to implore you, in his own name and for the love of him, to take the oath of obedience which you owe to the statute of Parliament, and of fidelity to his royal person――an oath he has a right to exact of you according to all laws, divine and human.”

“In fidelity, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “in respect, in attachment, I have never been wanting to the king. It has been a long time, a very long time, an entire lifetime, since I took the oath. It cannot be changed; therefore it can never be necessary to have it renewed.”

“You persist, then, in your culpable obstinacy?” said the lord chancellor.

“Nay, my lord, I am not obstinate.”

“Then say, at least,” cried Cranmer, wishing to appear animated by an officious zeal, “what offends you in this oath, what word you would reject――what is the reason, in fine, that prevents you from taking it.”

Sir Thomas raised his head, and paused a moment to consider the court. There was the Abbot of Westminster, who, during the days of his prosperity and favor, had overwhelmed him with visits and surfeited him with flattery; by his side the Duke of Norfolk, who without emotion beheld him to-day near death, and yet he had formerly loved him as a friend in whom he felt honored; Cromwell, whom he had always treated with respect, in spite of the antipathy he felt for him; the Duke of Suffolk, who had solicited him unceasingly, and almost gone down on his knees to him to obtain money from the king or a place for one of his creatures; Sir John Fitz-James, finally, to whom he had rendered an eminent service, and who had in other times sworn eternal gratitude to him, and to remain devoted to him in life and in death. Now death was approaching him, and he counted Sir John Fitz-James among the judges who were going to demand his head. Absorbed in the sad and dolorous conviction that in this world he could rely upon no one, he hesitated for a reply.

“You have heard, prisoner?” said Richard Rich brusquely.

“Pardon me, sir,” answered Sir Thomas gently; “but the lords have already spoken so much about the king’s displeasure that, if I should refuse to take this oath of supremacy, I fear to augment it still more by giving the reasons.”

“Ah! this is too much,” cried all the lords. “You not only refuse to take the oath, but you are not even willing to say why you refuse.”

“I would rather believe,” said Cromwell, “that Sir Thomas has returned to reason, and that he is no longer so sure that the oath may wound his conscience. Sir Thomas, is it not the case that you are now rather in a state of doubt and uncertainty in this regard? You know,” he continued, “that we owe entire obedience to the king; therefore you should take the oath he demands of you, and the scruples you feel would be removed by this imperious necessity.”

“It is true, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “that I ought to obey the king in all things as a faithful subject――which I am, and will be until death. But this is a case of conscience, in which I am not bound to obey the prince. Listen to me, my lord of Canterbury,” he said, fixing his eyes upon him with an expression full of benevolence. “I would blame none of those who have taken the oath; but, at the same time, I must say, if your argument was solid, there would be no more cases of doubtful conscience, because it would be sufficient for the king to pronounce yes or no in order to annihilate them all.”

“Truly,” cried the Abbot of Westminster, hurriedly interrupting him, “you are very obstinate in your own opinions; you ought to see that, from whatever point you view this question, you are necessarily mistaken, since you are entirely in opposition to the chief council of the kingdom, and that without doubt it possesses light enough to remove and destroy the scruples of your conscience.”

“My lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “if it is true that I am alone in my opposition to the entire Parliament, I ought certainly to feel alarmed. Nevertheless, in refusing the oath I listen to and follow the voice of the greatest of all counsellors――one to which every man should listen before any other; a monitor which he carries always within his own bosom. Besides, I will add that the opinion of the English Parliament cannot overbalance that of the Council of all Christendom.”

“Then you blame the Parliament, and refuse to adhere to the act of succession it has established?” angrily exclaimed Norfolk, the uncle of Anne Boleyn.

“My lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “your lordship knows that my intention is not, as I have already explained, to find fault either with the act or with the men who have drawn it up, nor to blame the oath nor those who have taken it. As far as I am personally concerned, I cannot take this oath without exposing myself to eternal damnation; and if you doubt that it is my conscience which causes me to refuse, I am ready to swear to the sincerity of my declaration. If you do not believe what I say, it is a great deal better not to impose the oath; and if you believe me, I hope you will not demand one in opposition to my conscience.”

Norfolk made a gesture of impatience. Then Audley, lord chancellor, turned toward his colleagues. “You see, you hear,” he said, “that Sir Thomas believes that he knows more than all the priests in London――than the Bishop of Rochester himself!” And he dwelt with a slight tone of irony on the last sentence.

“What! the Bishop of Rochester,” cried Sir Thomas.

“Without doubt, the Bishop of Rochester,” repeated Audley. “Mr. Secretary,” he said, turning towards Cromwell and giving him a preconcerted signal, “communicate to the accused a certain fact in which he is interested.”

Cromwell, descending from the platform, approached Sir Thomas and whispered in his ear: “The Bishop of Rochester has consented to swear; they have conducted him to the king, who has forgotten all his past conduct, and intends to load him with new favors.”

“Fisher has sworn!” cried Sir Thomas; and he was struck with consternation.

“Certainly!” said Cromwell, with an ill-disguised expression of irony and satirical joy; “they concealed it from you, that it might not be said you had pinned your opinion to the sleeve of another.”

“Sir,” answered More in a tone of profound sorrow, but with an expression of dignity greater still, “rest perfectly satisfied they will not say that. While bishops are appointed to do good and teach us to do it, it does not follow that, if they fall into error, we should imitate them. I am deeply afflicted by what you tell me, but do not change my opinion for all that. My conscience alone has directed me; now she alone remains with me, but I cannot, neither must I, cease to listen to her. I blame nobody――nobody! O my friend! what anguish has been reserved for me. My God! thou hast permitted it. Rochester has fallen!” said More in a low voice. “Lord, if the cedars break, what, then, will become of the reeds?”

Sir Thomas was unable to comprehend how Fisher could have been induced to yield or become so weak, and he was reduced to a state of mortal affliction.

“What!” said Cromwell, “can you not make up your mind?”

“Nay, sir, nay; I cannot make up my mind to this. There remains nothing more for me to do in this world, and I pray the Lord to remove me from it!”

“The accused refuses everything,” replied Cromwell in a loud voice, as he turned away from him.

“What obstinacy!” exclaimed the lords in one voice. “Sir Thomas, swear!――we conjure you in the name of all you hold most dear.”

“Alas!” said Sir Thomas to himself, “this is why he has not appeared. Alas! each day when I have suffered so much seeing him stand so long by my side, pale with fatigue and weakness, I was nevertheless happy. To-day――can it be? No, he has not been able to endure their tortures longer. God forgive them and save this country! Your pardon, my lords,” he said, remembering that they had addressed him. “What were your words to me?”

“He does not even listen,” they remarked. “We conjure you to swear; we implore you to do so with all our power.”

“I cannot,” replied Sir Thomas firmly, “and I positively refuse.”

On hearing him pronounce these words, which left them no alternative, there was a sudden commotion among the lords; they regarded each other with anxiety.

“A man of such merit, of such virtue,” thought Fitz-James, filled with remorse――“what business have I here?”

“Truly, Sir Thomas,” cried Secretary Cromwell, feigning compassion, “I am sorely grieved to hear you speak thus, and I declare here, before all this respectable assembly, that I would like better to lose an only son than to see you refuse the oath in this manner. For very certainly the king will be deeply wounded by it; he will conceive the most violent suspicions, and will not be able to believe that you have had no part in that affair of the Maid of Kent.”

“I am very much moved by your affection,” replied Sir Thomas; “but whatever penalties I may have to undergo, it is impossible for me to redeem them at the price of my soul.”

“You hear him, my lords,” said the chancellor, looking at his colleagues. “Sir Thomas, deaf to all our prayers, forgetting the favors with which the king has overwhelmed him for twenty years, tramples under foot the authority of Parliament, the laws of the kingdom, and persists traitorously, maliciously, and in your presence, in refusing to take an oath which every subject of this kingdom cannot and ought not to refuse. Consequently, I order the act of accusation to be read to the court, after which it will render judgment and pronounce its sentence.”

The clerk then began reading, in a nasal voice and monotonous tone, an accusation so long, the grievances of which were so multiplied, divided, extended, and diluted by a crowd of words and phrases, inductions, prejudices, and all kinds of suspicions, that it would require too much time to report them; but it was easy to see that it had been fabricated in bad faith and with the absence of all reasonable proofs.

This reading continued for two hours, and, when it was finished, the lord chancellor began: “What have you to reply to all this?” said Audley. “You see, Sir Thomas, and you should acknowledge, that you have gravely offended his majesty; nevertheless, the king is so merciful, and is so much attached to you, that he would pardon your obstinacy, if you changed your opinion, and we would be sure of obtaining your pardon, and even the return of his favor.”

He looked at Sir Thomas to see if he was relenting; for, except Cromwell, who desired More’s death, all the others, while too ambitious, too base, or too cowardly to dare sustain him, would have preferred seeing him yield to their entreaties.

“It would rejoice us greatly!” said Sir John Fitz-James.

“Most surely,” cried the Duke of Norfolk.

“Ay, verily,” slowly repeated Cromwell.

“He will listen to nothing!” said the Abbot of Westminster.

“Noble lords, I am under infinite obligations to your lordships for the lively interest you have manifested in my case; but, by the help of God, I wish to continue to live and die in his grace. As to the accusation I have just heard, it is so long, the hatred which has dictated it so violent, that I am seized with fear in realizing how little strength and understanding the sufferings of my body have left in my mind.”

“He should be permitted to sit down,” said Sir John Fitz-James in a low voice, the tears gathering in his eyes.

“Nobody objects,” said the Duke of Norfolk. “I demand it, on the contrary,” he added, elevating his voice.

“This will never end, then,” murmured Cromwell.

“Let a chair be brought to the accused,” said Audley, who dared not resist the Duke of Norfolk.

Sir Thomas seated himself for a moment, because he was able to stand no longer; then, summoning all his strength, he again arose to his feet, and spoke: “My accusation can be reduced, it seems to me, to four principal heads, and I will try and take them in order. The first crime with which I am accused is of being in my heart an opponent of the king’s second marriage. I confess that I have said to his majesty what my conscience dictated, and in that I can see no treason. But, on the contrary, if, being required by my prince to give him my opinion on a matter of such great importance, and which so deeply concerns the peace of the kingdom, I had basely flattered him, then indeed I should have been a treacherous and perfidious subject to God and to the king. I have not, then, offended, nor wished to offend, my king in replying, with the integrity of my heart, to the question he has asked me; moreover, admitting that I have been at fault in this, I have been punished for it already by the afflictions I have endured, the loss of my office, and the imprisonment I have undergone. The second charge brought against me, and the most explicit, is of having violated the act of the last Parliament, in this: that being a prisoner and examined by the council, I have not been willing, through a spirit of malice, of perfidy, of treachery, and obstinacy, to say whether or not the king was supreme head of the church, and that I have not been willing to confess whether that act was just or unjust, for the reason which I gave――that, having no other rank in the church than that of a simple layman, I had no authority to decide those things. Now, I will avow to your lordships that this was my reply: ‘I had neither done nor said anything which could be alleged and produced against me on the subject of this statute’; and I added that I no longer desired to occupy myself with anything here below, in order to be entirely absorbed in meditating on the Passion of my Saviour Jesus Christ in this miserable world, where I have such a short time to remain; that I wished ill to no one――on the contrary, every kind of prosperity; and also, if that was not sufficient to preserve my life, I did not desire to live; I had violated no law, and that I was not willing to surrender myself as guilty of any crime of high treason――for there are no laws in the world by which a man can be punished for his silence; they can do no more than punish him for his words and actions, and it is God alone who judges the heart.”

As Sir Thomas said these words, the advocate-general, Christopher Hales, suddenly interrupted him: “You say you have not uttered a word nor committed an act against this law; but you admit that you have kept silence, which is a conclusive sign of the malice of your heart, no good subject being able to refuse without crime to reply to this question when it is set before him as the law ordains.”

“My silence,” replied More, “is not a sign of the malice of my heart, since I have answered the king when he has consulted me on divers occasions; and I do not believe a man can be convicted of having attacked a law by keeping silence, since this maxim, ‘_Qui tacet consentire videtur_,’ is adopted and recognized as true by all the most learned and enlightened men of the law. With regard to what you say about a good subject having no right to refuse a direct reply to this question, I believe, on the contrary, that such is his duty, unless, indeed, he wish to be a bad Christian. Now, it is better to obey God than man, and it is better not to offend one’s conscience than everything else in the world, above all when this conscience cannot be the occasion of revolt against, or injury to, the king and the country. I protest to you, on this subject I have not revealed my opinion to any man living.”

“You know very well, on the contrary,” said the Duke of Norfolk sharply, “that your example will be followed, and a great many will refuse the oath on seeing you reject it.”

“Pardon me, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas; “but I have the right to think thus, since a moment ago my lord the chancellor reproached me with being the only one of my opinion in the kingdom. I can say, then, that my silence is neither injurious to the prince nor dangerous to the state.”

“How can you assert,” cried Christopher Hales, “that your refusal will not be the cause of any sedition or of any injury toward the king? Do you not know, then, that all his enemies have their eyes fixed on you, in order to confirm themselves by your audacity, and take advantage of the malice of which you have given proof? What, then, would you call an injury, if not a refusal thus contemptuous and unlawful with respect to the submission you owe to the will of your king, the living image of God upon earth?”

“The king has no enemies, sir,” replied Sir Thomas; “he has only some faithful subjects who wish to sigh in silence over the perfidious counsel which has been given him. I will dare almost to say,” he cried, laying his hand on his breast, “some tender and respectful friends, who would have given all for his glory, sacrificed all for his salvation, but who, for that same cause, cannot approve the error into which he has been made to fall.”

“Alas! he is lost,” thought Sir John; and he turned away his head.

“Well,” said Cromwell to himself, “the case becomes clear; they cannot draw back.”

While a low murmur of surprise and admiration arose among the jury, their foreman leaned toward Mr. Rich, and whispered to him excitedly.

“Truly! It is so, sir!” said the latter, looking fixedly at him. “It seems to me, Sir Thomas Palmer, that your remarks have much weight. Have you been called here to interpret the wishes of the king, or have you, by chance, a mind to make a short sojourn in the Tower or some part of its environs?” And he made his fingers crack. “With your short-sighted justice,” he replied, “do you believe that there are not some great reasons, which they do not wish you to know, which have led Sir Thomas to the bar of this tribunal? And if I should say to you――” He paused. “The dogs!” he murmured, looking at the faces of the jurors. “And if I should say to you,” he continued, “that this is an extortioner, and that he has devoured the revenues of the state――sucked――sucked the hearts’ blood of the poor people!”

“It cannot be possible!” said Palmer, awaiting each word of Rich, which seemed to fall drop by drop from his lips. “What! like the other?”

“Exactly, precisely like the other! Wonderful!” said Rich to himself. “They themselves furnish me with the words, the fools! I hope, indeed, that I may be exalted a grade from this; for this herd of jurors make me sweat blood and water. They called them so well chosen! So it appears; one goes to the right, the other to the left, a third to the middle. To the death――that is too hard; no, confiscation, or rather imprisonment. They wish to enter into the spirit of the law, as if they regarded the law! Condemn him, sirs――that is all they ask of you――and then go to your beds! Every one to his trade; theirs is not to inquire what we do, but what we wish them to do!” And Rich, much excited, shaking his great sleeves, leaned forward in order to listen.

“I come, then, to the third article of my accusation,” said Sir Thomas, “by which I am accused of malicious attempts, efforts, and perfidious practices against the statute, because, since being confined in the Tower, I have sent several packages of letters to Bishop Fisher, and in those letters I have exhorted him to violate this same law, and encouraged him in the resistance he has made to it. I have already demanded that those letters should be instantly produced and read to the court; they could thus have acquitted me or convicted me of falsehood. But as you say the bishop has burned them, I am only able to prove what I advance here by my own words; therefore I will state what they contained. The greater portion of those letters related to my private affairs, especially to our old friendship; in one of them alone I responded to the demand he had made to know how I would reply in my interrogatory upon the oath of supremacy, and I wrote to him thus: that I had examined this question in conscience, and he must be content with knowing that it was decided in my mind. God is my witness, as I hope to save my soul, that I have made no other reply, and I cannot presume that this could be considered an attack upon the laws.”

“Oh! no, by no means,” said several of the jurors. “Nevertheless, it would be necessary to see these documents.”

“That is the custom,” said a voice loudly enough.

“The jury examines the documents,” said another; “that is always done.”

“My lord judge! my lord advocate! it is necessary, it is customary――indispensable――”

Audley looked angrily at Rich. “Gentlemen, the jurors are perfectly right,” he cried in a shrill voice; “but these letters have been destroyed. They will proceed to examine other documents; then the witnesses of these facts will be heard.”

“Silence! silence!” cried the court usher.

“Gentlemen, do not interrupt the court,” said Cromwell gravely; “we should listen religiously to the least word of the prisoner’s defence.”

And thus he stifled by his awful voice the truth which had been excited in those troubled hearts.

Fatigued and weary, More kept silence; he was thinking, moreover, of his letters to the Bishop of Rochester. “If I had spoken more strongly to my friend,” he sorrowfully reflected, “perhaps he would not have succumbed. My God and my only Saviour! behold the afflictions that overwhelm my soul; for I fear I have only listened to the cowardly prudence of the children of men. And yet what could I do?”

More reproached himself with not having done enough, with having been mistaken. He groaned in spirit and humbled himself to the dust before God; whereas this tribunal by which he was being judged, in the face of which he found himself placed, before which he was traduced, was composed of men whom avarice, fear, and ambition caused to walk rapidly and firmly, without remorse and without shame, in the road, strewn with thorns, of vice, falsehood, and slavery.

“Speak on,” said Cromwell, provoked by his silence; “they will not dare to interrupt you again.”

Sir Thomas raised his eyes to his face, and regarded him fixedly. So much suffering, so many conflicting emotions, were weighing on his mind, that he no longer knew how to resume his discoveries or where he had left the thread of his ideas.

“You had replied to the third article,” said Cromwell, promptly assisting him, for fear of giving the assembly time for reflection. “Now, what else have you to say, and what have you to oppose to the testimony of Master Rich, who has heard you say in the Tower that the statute was a two-edged sword which killed necessarily either the soul or the body?”

“What I have to reply to that,” said Sir Thomas, “is that Master Rich called on me continually while they were removing the books I had in my prison. Fatigued by his importunate demands, I replied to him conditionally (which makes the case very different) that, if it was true, it was equally dangerous to avow or disavow this act; and that if it was similar to a two-edged sword, it was very hard to make it fall on me, who had never contradicted the statute either by my words or my actions. As to their accusing me of having drawn the Bishop of Rochester into my conspiracy, and induced him to make a reply similar to my own――alas! no, I have not done so. I have nothing more to add.” And he took his seat without a word more.

“You have nothing more to say?” repeated the chancellor.

“No, my lord.”

“That is well,” said Audley.

“He is here no longer,” said More; and he looked around him. “Where have they dragged him? To the king, perhaps. We should have received our sentence together. O Fisher! O my friend! No, it cannot be,” said More; “they are surely deceiving me! Does not falsehood flow naturally from their lips? Oh! how I would joy to see him, for one moment only. However, if he has not taken the oath, he will be here.” And he sank again into his silent sadness.

“We will proceed to examine the witnesses,” said the chancellor.

Master Rich, relieving himself immediately of his great robe, slowly descended from the platform and the chair from which he had surveyed the jury, and took his seat in the midst of the hall, in front of the tribunal.

He raised his hand and took the oath without hesitation. He then related how, having entered the prison cell of Thomas More with Palmer and Sir Richard Southwell, he had heard Sir Thomas express himself strongly against the statute and declare that no Parliament in the world would be able to submit to the question of the supremacy.

“You hear, Sir Thomas!” cried all the lords. “There is nothing to reply to this.”

Sir Thomas arose immediately, and an expression of deep emotion showed itself on his weary features. “My lords,” he replied, “if I was a man who had no regard for my oath, I would not be here before you as a criminal. And you, Master Rich,” he continued, turning toward him, “if what you have declared be true, and the oath you have taken be not perjury, then may I never look upon the face of God!――and this I would not assert for all the world contains, if what you have testified was the truth. Listen to me, my lords; judge between us, and learn what I have said to Master Rich. When he came to carry away my books from the dreary prison where I was confined, he approached me, took my hands, overwhelmed me with compliments, and, protesting to me that he had no commission touching the supremacy, during the course of a long conversation he recalled all the circumstances of our childhood, and proposed to me this question: ‘If Parliament recognized me as king, would you recognize me? and would it be treason not to do it?’ I answered that I would recognize him, but it was a _casus levis_. And in my turn I said to him: ‘If an act of Parliament should declare that God is not God, do you think it would be treason not to submit to that act?’

“Then Master Rich said that this question was too remote, and they could not discuss it. Whereupon he left me, and went away with those whom he had brought with him.

“In good faith, Master Rich,” pursued Sir Thomas, “I am more concerned on account of your perjury than because of the danger into which you have so heartlessly thrown me, and I must tell you that neither I nor any one else has ever regarded you as a man to whom they could confide a thing of so much importance as this. You know that I am acquainted with your life and conversation from your youth up to the present time. We were of the same parish; and you know right well, although I am very sorry to say and speak of it, that you always bore the reputation of having a very flippant and very lying tongue, that you were a great gambler, and you had not a good name in your parish and in the Temple, where you have been reared.

“Your lordships,” continued Sir Thomas, “can you believe that, in an affair of so great moment, I would have had so little discretion as to confide in Master Rich, entertaining the opinion I do of his want of truth and honesty; that I would have disclosed to him the secret of my conscience touching the supremacy of the king――a subject upon which I have been so strongly pressed, and which I have always refused to reveal to any of his grave and noble counsellors, who, your lordships know well, have been so often sent to the Tower to interrogate me? I submit it to your judgment, my lords: does this appear to you credible or possible?

“Moreover,” he immediately continued, “supposing Master Rich speaks the truth, it should still be remarked that this might have been said in a secret and private conversation upon some supposed questions and without any offending circumstances. Therefore they cannot, at least, say there was any malice on this occasion; and that being so, my lords, I cannot believe so many reverend bishops, honorable personages, so great a number of wise and virtuous men of which the Parliament is composed, would wish to punish a man with death when he has had no malice in his heart――taking, most certainly, this word malice in the sense of ill-will and open rebellion. Finally, I would again recall to your lordships’ attention the inexpressible kindness his majesty has manifested toward me during more than twenty years since he called me into his service, constantly appointing me to some new charge, some new office, and finally to the position of lord chancellor――an honor he had never bestowed on any lawyer before, this dignity being the greatest in the kingdom, and coming immediately after that of the crown; lastly, in relieving me of this charge, and permitting me to retire, and allowing me, at my own request, the liberty of passing the remainder of my days in the service of God, in order that I might occupy myself no more with aught but the salvation of my soul. And therefore I say that all the benefits his majesty has for so long a time and so abundantly showered upon me, in elevating me far beyond my merits, are enough, in my opinion, to break down the scandalous accusation so injuriously formulated by this man against me.” Having said these words, Sir Thomas was silent.