WARWICK [_whose patience is wearing out_] My lord: pray get The Church out of your head for a moment; and remember that there are temporal institutions in the world as well as spiritual ones. I and my peers represent the feudal aristocracy as you represent The Church. We are the temporal power. Well, do you not see how this girl’s idea strikes at us? CAUCHON. How does her idea strike at you, except as it strikes at all of us, through The Church? WARWICK. Her idea is that the kings should give their realms to God, and then reign as God’s bailiffs. CAUCHON [_not interested_] Quite sound theologically, my lord. But the king will hardly care, provided he reign. It is an abstract idea: a mere form of words. WARWICK. By no means. It is a cunning device to supersede the aristocracy, and make the king sole and absolute autocrat. Instead of the king being merely the first among his peers, he becomes their master. That we cannot suffer: we call no man master. Nominally we hold our lands and dignities from the king, because there must be a keystone to the arch of human society; but we hold our lands in our own hands, and defend them with our own swords and those of our own tenants. Now by The Maid’s doctrine the king will take our lands—our lands!—and make them a present to God; and God will then vest them wholly in the king. CAUCHON. Need you fear that? You are the makers of kings after all. York or Lancaster in England, Lancaster or Valois in France: they reign according to your pleasure. WARWICK. Yes: but only as long as the people follow their feudal lords, and know the king only as a travelling show, owning nothing but the highway that belongs to everybody. If the people’s thoughts and hearts were turned to the king, and their lords became only the king’s servants in their eyes, the king could break us across his knee one by one; and then what should we be but liveried courtiers in his halls? CAUCHON. Still you need not fear, my lord. Some men are born kings; and some are born statesmen. The two are seldom the same. Where would the king find counsellors to plan and carry out such a policy for him? WARWICK [_with a not too friendly smile_] Perhaps in the Church, my lord. CAUCHON [_with an equally sour smile, shrugs his shoulders, and does not contradict him_]. WARWICK. Strike down the barons; and the cardinals will have it all their own way.