“They are breaking up,” said the Prince
in a whisper to Fitzurse; “their fears anticipate
the event, and this coward Prior is the first to shrink
from me.”
“Fear not, my lord,” said Waldemar; “I
will show him such reasons as shall induce him to
join us when we hold our meeting at York. —–Sir
Prior,” he said, “I must speak with you
in private, before you mount your palfrey.”
The other guests were now fast dispersing, with the
exception of those immediately attached to Prince
John’s faction, and his retinue.
“This, then, is the result of your advice,”
said the Prince, turning an angry countenance upon
Fitzurse; “that I should be bearded at my own
board by a drunken Saxon churl, and that, on the mere
sound of my brother’s name, men should fall off
from me as if I had the leprosy?”
“Have patience, sir,” replied his counsellor;
“I might retort your accusation, and blame the
inconsiderate levity which foiled my design, and misled
your own better judgment. But this is no time
for recrimination. De Bracy and I will instantly
go among these shuffling cowards, and convince them
they have gone too far to recede.”
“It will be in vain,” said Prince John,
pacing the apartment with disordered steps, and expressing
himself with an agitation to which the wine he had
drank partly contributed—–“It
will be in vain—they have seen the handwriting
on the wall—–they have marked the
paw of the lion in the sand—–they
have heard his approaching roar shake the wood—–nothing
will reanimate their courage.”
“Would to God,” said Fitzurse to De Bracy,
“that aught could reanimate his own! His
brother’s very name is an ague to him.
Unhappy are the counsellors of a Prince, who wants
fortitude and perseverance alike in good and in evil!”
And yet he thinks,—–ha, ha, ha, ha,—–he
thinks
I am the tool and servant of his will.
Well, let it be; through all the maze of trouble
His plots and base oppression must create,
I’ll shape myself a way to higher things,
And who will say ’tis wrong?
Basil, a Tragedy
No spider ever took more pains to repair the shattered
meshes of his web, than did Waldemar Fitzurse to reunite
and combine the scattered members of Prince John’s
cabal. Few of these were attached to him from
inclination, and none from personal regard. It
was therefore necessary, that Fitzurse should open
to them new prospects of advantage, and remind them
of those which they at present enjoyed. To the
young and wild nobles, he held out the prospect of
unpunished license and uncontrolled revelry; to the
ambitious, that of power, and to the covetous, that
of increased wealth and extended domains. The
leaders of the mercenaries received a donation in
gold; an argument the most persuasive to their minds,
and without which all others would have proved in
vain. Promises were still more liberally distributed
