_King_. I, myself, heard the king say, he would not be ransomed. _Will_. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed and we ne'er the wiser. _King_. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after. _Will_. _Mass, you'll pay him then!_ That's a perilous shot out of an _elder gun_, that a poor and _private_ displeasure can do against a monarch. _You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice_, with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather. And, indeed, thus and not any less absurd and monstrous, appeared the idea of subjecting the king to any effect from the subject's displeasure, or the idea of calling him to account--this one, helpless, frail, private man, as he has just been conceded by the king himself to be, for any amount of fraud or dishonesty to the nation, for any breach of trust or honour. For his relation to the _mass_ and the source of this fearful irresponsible power was not understood then. The soldier states it well. One might, indeed, as well go about to turn the sun to ice, _with fanning in his face_ with a peacock's feather. 'You'll never trust his word after,' the soldier continues. 'Come, 'tis a foolish saying.' 'Your reproof is something _too round_,' is the king's reply. It is indeed round. It is one of those round replies that this poet is so fond of, and the king himself becomes 'the private' of it, when once the centre of this play is found, and the sweep of its circumference is taken. For the sovereignty of law, the kingship of the universal law _in whomsoever it speaks_, awful with God's power, armed with _his_ pains and penalties is the scientific sovereignty; and in the scientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and the arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal nature. It is but the shot out of an '_elder gun_;' he might as well 'go about to _turn the sun to ice_ with fanning in his face with a _peacock's_ feather.' 'I should be angry with you,' continues the king, after noticing the roundness of that reply, 'I should be angry with you, if _the time_ were convenient.'