Oh, Roland, from what an enterprise you are now withdrawing
your heart and hand, through mere fickleness and coldness of spirit!"
"How can I withdraw," said Roland, "from an enterprise which has never
been communicated to me?--Has the Queen, or have you, or has any one,
communicated with me upon any thing for her service which I have
refused? Or have you not, all of you, held me at such distance from
your counsels, as if I were the most faithless spy since the days of
Ganelon?" [Footnote: Gan, Gano, or Ganelon of Mayence, is in the
Romances on the subject of Charlemagne and his Paladins, always
represented as the traitor by whom the Christian champions are
betrayed.]
"And who," said Catherine Seyton, "would trust the sworn friend, and
pupil, and companion, of the heretic preacher Henderson? ay--a proper
tutor you have chosen, instead of the excellent Ambrosius, who is now
turned out of house and homestead, if indeed he is not languishing in
a dungeon, for withstanding the tyranny of Morton, to whose brother
the temporalities of that noble house of God have been gifted away by
the Regent."
"Is it possible?" said the page; "and is the excellent Father Ambrose
in such distress?"
"He would account the news of your falling away from the faith of your
fathers," answered Catherine, "a worse mishap than aught that tyranny
can inflict on himself."
"But why," said Roland, very much moved, "why should you suppose
that--that--that it is with me as you say?"
"Do you yourself deny it?" replied Catherine; "do you not admit that
you have drunk the poison which you should have dashed from your lips?
--Do you deny that it now ferments in your veins, if it has not
altogether corrupted the springs of life?--Do you deny that you have
your doubts, as you proudly term them, respecting what popes and
councils have declared it unlawful to doubt of?--Is not your faith
wavering, if not overthrown?--Does not the heretic preacher boast his
conquest?--Does not the heretic woman of this prison-house hold up thy
example to others?--Do not the Queen and the Lady Fleming believe in
thy falling away?--And is there any except one--yes, I will speak it
out, and think as lightly as you please of my good-will--is there one
except myself that holds even a lingering hope that you may yet prove
what we once all believed of you?"
"I know not," said our poor page, much embarrassed by the view which
was thus presented to him of the conduct he was expected to pursue,
and by a person in whom he was not the less interested that, though
long a resident in Lochleven Castle, with no object so likely to
attract his undivided attention, no lengthened interview had taken
place since they had first met,--"I know not what you expect of me,
or fear from me.
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