first being formally, though not judicially, separated from him—­or in some other way.[138] But the emperor was “a lion in his path;” the question of strength between the French and the Spaniards remained undecided, and Clement would come to no decision until he was assured of the power of the allies to protect him from the consequences.  Accordingly he said and unsaid, sighed, sobbed, beat his breast, shuffled, implored, threatened;[139] in all ways he endeavoured to escape from his dilemma, to say yes and to say no, to do nothing, to offend no one, and above all to gain time, with the weak man’s hope that “something might happen” to extricate him.  Embassy followed embassy from England, each using language more threatening than its predecessor.  The thing, it was said, must be done, and should be done.  If it was not done by the pope it would be done at home in some other way, and the pope must take the consequences.[140] Wolsey warned him passionately of the rising storm,[141] a storm which would be so terrible when it burst “that it would be better to die than to live.”  The pope was strangely unable to believe that the danger could be real, being misled perhaps by other information from the friends of Queen Catherine, and by an over-confidence in the attachment of the people to the emperor.  He acted throughout in a manner natural to a timid amiable man, who found himself in circumstances to which he was unequal; and as long as we look at him merely as a man we can pity his embarrassment.  He forgot, however, that only because he was supposed to be more than a man had kings and emperors consented to plead at his judgment seat—­a fact of which Stephen Gardiner, then Wolsey’s secretary, thought it well to remind him in the following striking language:—­

“Unless,” said the future Bishop of Winchester in the council, at the close of a weary day of unprofitable debating, “unless some other resolution be taken than I perceive you intend to make, hereupon shall be gathered a marvellous opinion of your Holiness, of the college of cardinals, and of the authority of this See.  The King’s Highness, and the nobles of the realm who shall be made privy to this, shall needs think that your Holiness and these most reverend and learned councillors either will not answer in this cause, or cannot answer.  If you will not, if you do not choose to point out the way to an erring man, the care of whom is by God committed to you, they will say, ’Oh race of men most ungrateful, and of your proper office most oblivious!  You who should be simple as doves are full of all deceit, and craft, and dissembling.  If the king’s cause be good, we require that you pronounce it good.  If it be bad, why will you not say that it is bad, so to hinder a prince to whom you are so much bounden from longer continuing with it?  We ask nothing of you but justice, which the king so loves and values, that whatever sinister things others may say or think of him, he will follow that with all his heart; that, and nothing else, whether it be for the marriage or against the marriage.’