Now, That day is come, ay, and that very hour: Now shout your war-cry; now unsheath your sword; I'll join the din, and make these tottering walls Tremble and nod to hear our fierce defiance. Nay, never start, and look upon my cowl-- You love not priests, De Bourbon, more than I. Off, vile denial of my manhood's pride; Off, off to hell! where thou wast first invented, Now once again I stand and breathe a knight. Nay, stay not gazing thus: it is Garcia, Whose name hath reach'd thee long ere now, I trow; Whom thou hast met in deadly fight full oft, When France and Spain join'd in the battle field. Beyond the Pyrenean boundary That guards thy land, are forty thousand men: Their unfurl'd pennons flout fair France's sun, And wanton in the breezes of her sky: Impatient halt they there; their foaming steeds, Pawing the huge and rock-built barrier, That bars their further course--they wait for thee: For thee whom France hath injur'd and cast off; For thee, whose blood it pays with shameful chains, More shameful death; for thee, whom Charles of Spain Summons to head his host, and lead them on To conquest and to glory. The interest now reverts to the fate of Françoise, and Bourbon is lost sight of; a transition which, both in acting and reading, endangers the drama.[1] News arrives of the flight of Lautrec from his government; of his arrest, his imprisonment, and capital condemnation.[2] He enjoins his sister to intercede in his behalf with Francis; she complies, but it is at the expense of her honour; broken-hearted, she sinks beneath her shame at the crime into which she has been betrayed, and returns home. Francis pursues her, and the Queen, now aware of his passion for her, dispatches the monk Gonzales on a secret mission to poison Françoise, who, she fears, may supplant her in her ascendancy over the King. A fine passage occurs in the scene wherein the Queen proposes her scheme to Gonzales. QUEEN. Didst ever look upon the dead? GONZALES. Ay, madam, Full oft; and in each calm or frightful guise Death comes in,--on the bloody battle-field; When with each gush of black and curdling life A curse was uttered,--when the pray'rs I've pour'd, Have been all drown'd with din of clashing arms-- And shrieks and shouts, and loud artillery, That shook the slipp'ry earth, all drunk with gore-- I've seen it, swoll'n with subtle poison, black And staring with concentrate agony-- When ev'ry vein hath started from its bed, And wreath'd like knotted snakes, around the brows That, frantic, dash'd themselves in tortures down Upon the earth. I've seen life float away On the faint sound of a far tolling bell-- Leaving its late warm tenement as fair, As though 'twere th' incorruptible that lay Before me--and all earthly taint had vanish'd With the departed spirit.