"Ah! how true it is," said he, "that desire for fame and power is but an insatiate parasite which gluts and fattens upon the care-free joys of youth. What is this glittering panoply, pray, but a mask? A shining veneer, shielding from view the process of decay within? And now, after yielding nearly all--my health, my strength, my happiness--you ask of me that I shall spill the blood of my dearest friend. The companion of my joyous youth. Him, say you, must I offer up on the gory altar of public expediency. That I must perforce still the one brave heart that beats with an unselfish devotion to my cause and person." "'Tis needless to tell thee, my liege," purred Stanley, who was ever careful to guard his precedence at the throne, "that the peace and integrity of a nation depend upon thy secure hold upon this very seat. Even that which but remotely menaces should be rendered impotent. These expressions of thy tender sentiment, your highness, are attuned in harmony with thy noble character as a man, but----" "Yea, Stanley," interrupted Henry, making a show of partial surrender to the flatterer's wiles, "but am I longer a man? There's the question, my lord. Dare I think as a man, and not as a fear-stricken, fettered monarch? Is it not true that the ruler hath swallowed up the mortal, leaving naught but an outward pageant? An effigy of cold and heartless clay upon which to drape a tawdry robe; to set a jeweled crown; to hang a golden scepter?" Stanley ventured no reply, and a somewhat prolonged interval of silence followed Henry's theatric outburst. "Think not that I am mad, my lord of Stanley," the King at length resumed, and in a tone so low, melancholy, and sad, that its false note was scarcely to be perceived. "It is indeed true that my first concern must ever be to safeguard my beloved people. Hath these rumors concerning the young knight been spread broadcast, my lord? It were an ill time to essay a cure of the malady, and it had festered over all England." "It hath not done so, your majesty," Lord Stanley assured him. "The aged seaman and all but two of the seditious leaders are now imprisoned within the tower. The pair who escaped the meshes of my net are now journeying hither from London in disguise. I have their names and know well what like they are."