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"If it had been his base life which I sought," said Brandon, vehemently, "I might long ago have taken it. He was surrounded on all sides by my power. He could not escape. Officers of the law stood ready to do my bidding. Yet I allowed him to leave the Hall in safety. I might have taken his heart's-blood. I might have handed him over to the law. I did not."
"Tell it to me," said the Nightingale, "I am not afraid." "If you want a red rose," said the Tree, "you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart's-blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine."
How much learning, thought I, bought with the heart's-blood, how many million hours of fierce intellectual struggle appeal to mankind nowadays but as an odour, an odour of decay, in the nostrils of here and there a casual student. I thought this, and my eye caught, repeated many times, the name of the Frangipani, once lords of Segna.
But just because I fear to stumble in the other name, I would have given of my heart's-blood if only his name might have been 'my sweet friend'." She delays so long in thus thinking that the queen returns from the king, who had sent for her. Alexander sees her coming, and goes to meet her, and asks her what the king commands to be done with his prisoners, and what will be their fate.
The others that still stand have their own difficulties, I can tell you! You lie there plainly in the ditch. And I am to pick you up again, on these mad terms; help you ever again, as with our best heart's-blood, to do what, once for all, the gods have made impossible? To load the fatal chain with your perpetual staggerings and sprawlings; and ever again load it, till we all lie sprawling?
Those who acted in the matter with me are willing that I should be the scape-goat of the atonement those who looked on and helped not, bear themselves now as if they had been borne down by violence; and while I looked that they should shout applause on me, because of the victory of Worcester, whereof the Lord had made me the poor instrument, they look aside to say, 'Ha! ha! the King-killer, the Parricide soon shall his place be made desolate. Truly it is a great thing, Gilbert Pearson, to be lifted above the multitude; but when one feeleth that his exaltation is rather hailed with hate and scorn than with love and reverence in sooth, it is still a hard matter for a mild, tender-conscienced, infirm spirit to bear and God be my witness, that, rather than do this new deed, I would shed my own best heart's-blood in a pitched field, twenty against one."
I will wash away the stain he has cast upon my honour with the schellum's heart's-blood."
But horrible accounts are running up, enough to sink the world at last, while the heavier whip is lazily withheld, and lazy blasphemy, fallen torpid, chronic, and quite unconscious of being blasphemous, insinuates itself into the very heart's-blood of mankind! Patience, however; the heavy whip too is coming, unless universal death be coming. King Friedrich is not the man to wield such whip.
I see it all now: your constant self-denial, your untiring efforts to please, until, wearied and discouraged, your very heart's-blood seemed chilled within you, and you became the living image of that cold heartlessness which had caused the fearful change. "But may we not forget the past?
Ask me not for Indian meal; you shall be compelled to earn it first; know that on other terms I will not give you any. Before Heaven and Earth, and God the Maker of us all, I declare it is a scandal to see such a life kept in you, by the sweat and heart's-blood of your brothers; and that, if we cannot mend it, death were preferable!
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