Thou hast relinquished the service of the
Lady of Avenel?"
"I have been dismissed from it, my mother--I have lived to be
dismissed, as if I were the meanest of the train."
"It is the better, my child," replied she; "thy mind will be the more
hardened to undertake that which must be performed."
"Let it be nothing, then, against the Lady of Avenel," said the page,
"as thy look and words seem to imply. I have eaten her bread--I have
experienced her favour--I will neither injure nor betray her."
"Of that hereafter, my son," said she; "but learn this, that it is not
for thee to capitulate in thy duty, and to say this will I do, and
that will I leave undone--No, Roland! God and man will no longer abide
the wickedness of this generation. Seest thou these fragments--
knowest thou what they represent?--and canst thou think it is for thee
to make distinctions amongst a race so accursed by Heaven, that they
renounce, violate, blaspheme, and destroy, whatsoever we are commanded
to believe in, whatsoever we are commanded to reverence?"
As she spoke, she bent her head towards the broken image, with a
countenance in which strong resentment and zeal were mingled with an
expression of ecstatic devotion; she raised her left hand aloft as in
the act of making a vow, and thus proceeded; "Bear witness for me,
blessed symbol of our salvation, bear witness, holy saint, within
whose violated temple we stand, that as it is not for vengeance of my
own that my hate pursues these people, so neither, for any favour or
earthly affection towards any amongst them, will I withdraw my hand
from the plough, when it shall pass through the devoted furrow! Bear
witness, holy saint, once thyself a wanderer and fugitive as we are
now--bear witness, Mother of Mercy, Queen of Heaven--bear witness,
saints and angels!"
In this high train of enthusiasm, she stood, raising her eyes through
the fractured roof of the vault, to the stars which now began to
twinkle through the pale twilight, while the long gray tresses which
hung down over her shoulders waved in the night-breeze, which the
chasm and fractured windows admitted freely.
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