HERBERT. Do you see, my lord, There is the King talking with Walter Map? BECKET. He hath the Pope's last letters, and they threaten The immediate thunder-blast of interdict: Yet he can scarce be touching upon those, Or scarce would smile that fashion. HERBERT. Winter sunshine! Beware of opening out thy bosom to it, Lest thou, myself, and all thy flock should catch An after ague-fit of trembling. Look! He bows, he bares his head, he is coming hither. Still with a smile. _Enter_ KING HENRY _and_ WALTER MAP. HENRY. We have had so many hours together, Thomas, So many happy hours alone together, That I would speak with you once more alone. BECKET. My liege, your will and happiness are mine. [_Exeunt_ KING _and_ BECKET. HERBERT. The same smile still. WALTER MAP. Do you see that great black cloud that hath come over the sun and cast us all into shadow? HERBERT. And feel it too. WALTER MAP. And see you yon side-beam that is forced from under it, and sets the church-tower over there all a-hell-fire as it were? HERBERT. Ay. WALTER MAP. It is this black, bell-silencing, anti-marrying, burial-hindering interdict that hath squeezed out this side-smile upon Canterbury, whereof may come conflagration. Were I Thomas, I wouldn't trust it. Sudden change is a house on sand; and tho' I count Henry honest enough, yet when fear creeps in at the front, honesty steals out at the back, and the King at last is fairly scared by this cloud--this interdict. I have been more for the King than the Church in this matter--yea, even for the sake of the Church: for, truly, as the case stood, you had safelier have slain an archbishop than a she-goat: but our recoverer and upholder of customs hath in this crowning of young Henry by York and London so violated the immemorial usage of the Church, that, like the gravedigger's child I have heard of, trying to ring the bell, he hath half-hanged himself in the rope of the Church, or rather pulled all the Church with the Holy Father astride of it down upon his own head. HERBERT. Were you there? WALTER MAP. In the church rope?--no. I was at the crowning, for I have pleasure in the pleasure of crowds, and to read the faces of men at a great show. HERBERT. And how did Roger of York comport himself? WALTER MAP. As magnificently and archiepiscopally as our Thomas would have done: only there was a dare-devil in his eye--I should say a dare-Becket. He thought less of two kings than of one Roger the king of the occasion. Foliot is the holier man, perhaps the better. Once or twice there ran a twitch across his face as who should say what's to follow? but Salisbury was a calf cowed by Mother Church, and every now and then glancing about him like a thief at night when he hears a door open in the house and thinks 'the master.' HERBERT. And the father-king?