"No, my friend, no," replied Schomberg, "it were not better, for neither could you so best do honour to their name, neither would your death and sacrifice avail aught to the great cause of religious liberty. But there is more to be considered, Albert of Morseiul; you might not gain the fate you sought for. The perverse bullet and the unwilling steel often, too often, will not do their fatal mission upon him that courts them. How often do we see that the timid, the cowardly, or the man who has a thousand sweet inducements to seek long life, meets death in the first field he enters, while he who in despair or rage walks up to the flashing cannon's mouth escapes as by a miracle? Think; Morseiul, if such were to be your case, what would be the result: first to linger in imprisonment, next to see the exterminating sword of persecution busy amongst those that you had led on into revolt, to know that their hearths were made desolate, their children orphans, their patrimony given to others, their wives and daughters delivered to the brutal insolence of victorious soldiers; and then, knowing all this, to end your own days as a common criminal, stretched on a scaffold on the torturing wheel, amidst the shouts and derisions of superstitious bigots, with the fraudulent voice of monkish hypocrisy pouring into your dying ear insults to your religion and to your God. Think of all this! and think also, that, at that last moment, you would know that you yourself had brought it all to pass, without the chance of effecting one single benefit to yourself or others." The Count put his hand before his eyes, but made no reply; and then, wringing Marshal Schomberg's hand, he mounted his horse and rode slowly away. For a considerable distance he went on towards Poitiers at the same slow pace, filled with dark and gloomy thoughts, and with nothing but despair on every side. He felt that the words of Marshal Schomberg were true to their fullest extent, and a sort of presage of the coming events seemed to gather slowly upon his heart, like dark clouds upon the verge of the sky. His only hope reduced itself to the same narrow bounds which had long contained those of Schomberg; the result, namely, of the proposed petition to the King.