“ Surely you were but the servant of one whom you could not discover."
"I had the King's own commission for all I did, for every word I said," said Inglesant eagerly—"a commission written by himself, and signed in my presence, which he gave me himself. That was the paper the Lord Biron would not burn."
"I knew it must be so, Johnny; my uncle told me it must be so. It seems to me you have served a hard master, though you do not complain. We heard about the scaffold at Charing Cross. Will you serve your heavenly Master as well as you have served your King?" ”

“ If the lofty Strafford had fallen, and the Archbishop had proved powerless to protect himself, how was he to protect any who might trust to him? Even if he had thought nothing of this, it would have been impossible to have been angry with the distracted man before him, untrained to conceal his thoughts, nay, taught by his religion that self-restraint or concealment is a sin, and that to keep back a word or a thought is a frustration of the will of God—a training that would lay him open at every point before the polished pupil of the Jesuit and the Court. ”

“ Inglesant listened breathlessly and with open eyes to this address. It made his heart beat high with delight and excitement. Death—nay, the bitterest torture—would be nothing to him, if only he could win this man's approval, and be not only true but successful in his trust. His entire devotion to the Jesuit cannot be looked upon as anything wonderful, for the whole mental power of the latter, directed by the nicest art—a power and an art at that time not surpassed in Europe—had been directed to this end upon the boy's susceptible nature, and the result could not be doubtful. ”

“ He soon found out Inglesant's tendency towards Catholicism, and strongly dissuaded him from it.
"Your idea of the Catholic system," he said, "is a dream, and has no real existence among the Papists. Your ideal is an exalted Platonic manifestation of the divine existence diffused among men: the reality is a system of mean trivial details, wearisome and disgusting to such men as you are. Instead of the perfect communion with the Divine Light, such as you seek, you will have before you and above you nothing but the narrow conceptions of some ignorant priest to whom you must submit your intellect. ”

“ It was your brother I sent for, whom this stupid boy seemingly has sought in Ephesus and not in England."
"I am happy for once to have supplanted my brother, madam," said Johnny, adapting from his part. "I have run hither to your grace, whom only to see now gives me ample satisfaction for these deep shames and great indignities."
"I am afraid of you, Mr. Inglesant," said the lady; "you have so high a reputation with grave and religious people, and yet you are a better cavalier than your brother, when you condescend that way. That is how you please the Nuns of Gidding so well." ”

“ You will see Italy, and delight yourself in the sight of all those places and antiquities of which we have so often talked; and with your cultivated and religious tastes you will enter, with the most perfect advantage, into that magic world of sight and sound which the churches and sacred services in Rome present to the devout. I cannot see that you can do better than go."
Inglesant sat looking at the Jesuit with a singular expression in his eyes, which the latter did not understand. ”

“ To those who know Him as you know Him, and have seen Him as you have, better Jesus, beaten and defeated, than all the universe besides, triumphing and crowned. I offer to you nothing but the alternative which every man sooner or later must place before himself. Shall he turn a deaf ear to the voice of reason, and lay himself open only to the light of faith? or shall he let human wisdom and human philosophy break up this light, as through a glass, and please himself with the varied colours upon the path of life? Every man must choose ”

“ Inglesant asked him if he had any mission he would wish performed, but the other shook his head, and seemed to give himself to prayer. After a minute or two he seemed to rally, and his face became very calm. Opening his eyes, he looked at Johnny steadily and with affection, and said, slowly and with difficulty, but still with a look of rest and peace,—
"Mr. Inglesant, you spoke to me once of standing together in a brighter dawn; I did not believe you, but it was true; the dawn is breaking—and it is bright." ”

“ The Chapel was lighted, and on the white cloth of the altar were tapers and flowers. Half awake in the sweet fresh morning air, Johnny knelt on the cold flag stones of the Chapel and saw the mass. Strangers who had come to the Priory on purpose were present, and some gentlemen of the neighbourhood whom Johnny knew. It is strange that the Jesuit should have placed so much trust in the prudence and fidelity of a boy; but he probably knew his pupil, and certainly had no cause to repent. ”

“ Inglesant could scarcely sit his horse, much less expect to overtake his brother—who was well mounted and an impetuous rider—nevertheless he gave his horse the spur, and the animal, also a good roadster, soon left the servants far behind. The confusion of mind which he suffered increased more and more as he rode along, and the events of his past life came up before his eyes as clearly and palpably as the objects through which he was riding, so that he could not distinguish the real from the imaginary, the present from the past, which added extremely to his distress. ”

“ The Jesuit looked at Inglesant with surprise. The terrible earnestness of his manner, and the unrelenting and grim pleasure he seemed to take at the prospect of revenge, seemed so inconsistent with the refined and religious tone of his ordinary character, approaching almost to weakness; but the next moment he thought, "Why should I wonder at it? The man who has gone through what he did without flinching must have a strength of purpose about him far other than some might think." ”

“ Every word that Cressy spoke went straight to Inglesant's conviction, and no single word jarred upon his taste. He implicitly believed that what the Benedictine offered him he should find. There was no doubt—could be no doubt—that it was by such choice as this that such men as Cressy gained for themselves a power in the heavenly warfare, and not only attained to the heavenly walk themselves, but moved the earth to its foundations, and drew thousands into the ranks of Christ. ”

“ All that your Majesty has to do now is to be silent."
"Then Inglesant must be given up," said the King.
"He must be given up. Your Majesty has no choice."
"Another!" said the King, bitterly. "Strafford, whose blood tinges every sight I see! Laud, Glamorgan, now another! What right have I to suppose my servants will be faithful to me, when I give them up, one by one, without a word?"
"Your Majesty does not discriminate," said the Jesuit; "your good heart overpowers your clearer reason. ”

“ As soon as it is convenient to you I shall be glad for you to leave this sombre place, as I want you to come with me to Oulton, to my wife,—my wife, who is indeed so perfectly English in all her manners, as I shall proceed to explain to you. Since you were at Oulton my wife has been growing worse and worse in health, and more and more eccentric and crotchety; every new remedy and every fresh religious notion she adopts at once. She has filled the house with quacks, of whom Van Helmont is chief, mountebanks, astrologers, and physicians,—a fine collection of beaux-esprits. ”

“ Hobbes's doctrine was new to him, as it was to every one in that day, indeed, the particular form it took was peculiar to Hobbes, and perished with him; but the underlying materialism which in some form or other has presented itself to the thinkers of every age, and which now for the first time came before Inglesant's mind, was not without its effect. "How do I know indeed," he said, "that this divine life within me is anything but an opinion formed by what I have heard and read? How do I know that there is any such thing as a divine life at all?" ”

“ The Father made Johnny read with him every day, and by his wealth of learning and acquaintance with men and foreign countries, made the reading interesting in the highest degree. In this way he read the classics, making them not dead school books, but the most human utterances that living men ever spoke; and while from these he drew illustrations of human life when reading Plato—which he did every day—he led his pupil to perceive, as he did more fully when he grew older, that wonderful insight into the spiritual life and spiritual distinctions which even Christianity has failed to surpass. ”

“ I crossed his path twice—once in love and once in war—and at both times he acted as a gallant gentleman and a man of God. I wish you good day."
He turned away, and went down to the river, from which his regiment had by this time also fallen back, the others looking after him as he went.
"Who is that?" said a stern and grim-looking Puritan officer. "He does not speak as the graceless Cavaliers mostly do."
"His name is Inglesant," said a quiet, pale man, in dark and plain clothes; "he is one of the King's servants, a concealed Papist, and, they say, a Jesuit. I have seen him often at Whitehall." ”

“ One Sunday evening, the day before he was to meet Cressy, walking along the Rue St Martin from the Boulevard where he had lodgings, he turned into the Jesuits' Church just as the sermon had begun. The dim light found its way into the vast Church from the stained windows; a lamp burning before some shrine shone partially on the preacher, as he stood in the stone pulpit by a great pillar, in his white surplice and rich embroidered stole. ”

“ His whole life from his boyhood had been so formed upon the idea of some day proving himself worthy of the confidence reposed in him (that perfect unexpressed confidence which won his very nature to a passionate devotion capable of the supreme action, whatever it might be, to which all his training had tended) , that to have faltered at any moment would have been more impossible to him than suicide, than any self-contradictory action could have been—as impossible as for a proud man to become suddenly naturally humble, or a merciful man cruel. ”

“ They stood as thick as they could be packed in the little courtyard, and up the sloping fields around the Priory, listening in silence to the music of the mass; and at the sound of the bell the whole multitude fell on their knees as one man, remaining so for several minutes. Mass being over, the Prior came in procession from the Chapel to where a small wooden pulpit had been set up just outside the gate-house, in front of which seats were placed for the Sheriff and Inglesant, and the chief gentry. ”

“ To a free and divine spirit how lovely, how magnificent is this state for the soul of man to be in, when, the life of God inactuating her, she travels through heaven and earth, and unites with, and after a sort feels herself the life and soul of this whole world, even as God? ”

“ I saw him once," replied the doctor; "and in conversation with him I felt myself as it were turned into brass, so much did his spirit and perversity oppress mine."
"There are some men," the doctor went on, after a pause—but Inglesant did not know of whom he was thinking—"that by a divine sort of fate are virtuous and good, and this to a very great and heroical degree; and come into the world rather for the good of others, and by a divine force, than through their own proper fault, or any immediate or necessary congruity of their natures. ”

“ Inglesant? He will be here directly, and will find me alone. What would have happened to me if you had not come?"
"If I may offer any advice, madam, I should say, Tell your husband everything exactly as it happened. Nothing has happened of which you have need to be ashamed. Sir Richard will doubtless see that you have been shamefully deceived by your friends, as far as I understand the matter. You can trust to his sympathy and kindness."
She did not reply, and Inglesant, who found his situation far more awkward than before, said, "Shall I seek for Lady Cardiff, madam, and bring her to you?" ”

“ But I fear," he added sadly, "from the state I find you in, it really mattered little whether I got in or not."
"Oh, never say that," said Lord Biron cheerily; "the sight of you is a corps of relief in itself. Come in here and let me hear what you have to say. I will not keep the news a moment from you, gentlemen," he added courteously to the rest.
"If you will pardon me, my lord," said Inglesant, "and allow me a moment to wash this dirt off, and if some one would lend me a suit of clothes, it would be a courtesy. I had to leave my own in Flintshire, and these are none of the pleasantest. ”

“ When I was in Italy and stayed some time at Venice, and was desirous of engaging in some of the intrigues and amusements of the city, I was recommended to an Italian, a young man, who made himself useful to several of the nobility, as a man who could introduce me to, and show me more of that kind of pleasure, than any one else. I found him all that had been represented to me, and a great deal more, for, not to tell you too long a story, he was an adept at every sort of intrigue, and was acquainted at any rate with every species of villany and vice that the Italians have conceived. ”