Then, in a vision, as he lies sleeping on his couch, with his armour on and his sword-hilt grasped in his hand, he sees, one by one, the spectres of all those he has done to death. He wakens in terror. His conscience has a thousand tongues, and every tongue condemns him as a perjurer and assassin:-- "I shall despair.--There is no creature loves me; And if I die no soul shall pity me." These are such pangs of conscience as would sometimes beset even the strongest and most resolute in those days when faith and superstition were still powerful, and when even one who scoffed at religion and made a tool of it had no assurance in his heart of hearts. There is in these words, too, a purely human sense of loneliness and of craving for affection, which is valid for all time. Most admirable is the way in which Richard summons up his manhood and restores the courage of those around him. These are the accents of one who will give despair no footing in his soul:-- "Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe;" and there is in his harangue to the soldiers an irresistible roll of fierce and spirit-stirring martial music; it is constructed like strophes of the _Marseillaise_:-- "Remember whom you are to cope withal;-- A sort of vagabonds, rascals, runaways. _(Que veut cette horde d'esclaves?)_ You having lands, and bless'd with beauteous wives, They would restrain the one, distain the other. _(Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes.)_ Let's whip these stragglers o'er the seas again." But there is a ferocity, a scorn, a popular eloquence in Richard's words, in comparison with which the rhetoric of the _Marseillaise_ seems declamatory, even academic. His last speeches are nothing less than superb:--