Chapter XXII
Yes, life hath left him—every busy thought,
Each fiery passion, every strong affection,
All sense of outward ill and inward sorrow,
Are fled at once from the pale trunk before me;
And I have given that which spoke and moved,
Thought, acted, suffer'd as a living man,
To be a ghastly form of bloody clay,
Soon the foul food for reptiles.
Old Play.
I believe few successful duellists (if the word successful can be applied to a superiority so fatal) have beheld their dead antagonist stretched on the earth at their feet, without wishing they could redeem with their own blood that which it has been their fate to spill. Least of all could such indifference be the lot of so young a man as Halbert Glendinning, who, unused to the sight of human blood, was not only struck with sorrow, but with terror, when he beheld Sir Piercie Shafton lie stretched on the greensward before him, vomiting gore as if impelled by the strokes of a pump. He threw his bloody sword on the ground, and hastened to kneel down and support him, vainly striving, at the same time, to stanch his wound, which seemed rather to bleed inwardly than externally.
The unfortunate knight spoke at intervals, when the syncope would permit him, and his words, so far as intelligible, partook of his affected and conceited, yet not ungenerous character.
'Most rustical youth,' he said, 'thy fortune hath prevailed over knightly skill, and Audacity hath overcome Condescension, even as the kite hath sometimes hawked at and struck down the falcon-gentle. Fly and save thyself! Take my purse; it is in the nether pocket of my carnationcoloured hose, and is worth a clown's acceptance. See that my mails, with my vestments, be sent to the monastery of Saint Mary's ' (here his voice grew weak, and his mind and recollection seemed to waver)—'I bestow the cut velvet jerkin, with close breeches conforming—for—oh!—the good of my soul.'
