and the buffetiers approached him, wagging their jaws. 'I appeal to your Eminence. I am condemned to death by this arbitrary monarch for having told him the truth. He will not believe me. He is a type of the great and foolish world, the mass of self-satisfied mankind, which will not believe the things that it hath not seen, because it cannot or will not understand them. I compare not myself, or my insignificant abilities, to great and marvellous ones which are above my poor comprehension; but well I know—at least I believe—that in the millions of worlds of whose existence we are sure, because we see them as twinkling stars, there are possibilities and realities surpassing in sublime grandeur the most exalted conceptions of our miserable minds. Shall we presume to say they are lies, and exist only in our own imaginations?'
'King of England!' said the Cardinal solemnly, 'have I not advised you to shed no more blood, even as I would advise the princes and powers of the earth to wage no more unjust war? Have you forgotten my history? You will not believe this man's story, which is not, I venture to think, one whit more extraordinary than my own, which you well know to be true. I speak freely now as you have done your worst' (here the buffetiers laughed, and wagged their jaws again), 'and I fear nothing. Did I not rise from nothing, as the fungus in the night, or as the fiery rocket into the air, while thousands of poor creatures were left to grovel in poverty all their lives? I became your fathers trusted and favourite councillor, O King! and then yours, because I had the genius to take advantage of the opportunities which rapidly presented themselves to me; no drivelling qualm of conscience, or wretched fear of offending the High Majesty of Heaven, keeping me back. Those men who study to please their Maker may become poorer but are better as they grow older, while those who study to please themselves and the world become worse. I
