"My faith to a higher Master than even the Lord of Wallingford, to whom I owed so much."
"The Church never taught me that much: if all we do is so wrong, why are we not excommunicated? Why, we are allowed our chapel, our chaplain--who troubles himself little about what goes on--our Masses! and we shall easily buy ourselves out of Purgatory when all is over."
Too true, Alain; the Church did grievously neglect her duty at Wallingford and elsewhere, and passively allow such dreadful dens of tyranny to exist. But Osric had learnt better.
"I do not believe you will buy yourselves out. The old priest who served our little church once quoted a Saint--I think they called him 'Augustine'--who said such things could only profit those whose lives merited that they should profit them. But you did not come here to discuss religion."
"No, indeed. Tell me what changed your mind?"
"Things that I heard at my grandfather's deathbed, which taught me I had been aiding and abetting in the Devil's work."
"Devil's work, Osric! The tiger preys upon the deer, the wolf on the sheep, the fox on the hen, the cat on the bird,--it is so all through creation; and we do the same. Did the Devil ordain the laws of nature?"
"Brethren are we! Do you think I call the vile canaille my brethren?--not I. The base fluid which circulates in their veins is not like the generous blood which flows in the veins of the noble and gallant. I have no more sympathy with such folk than the cat with the mouse. Her nature, which God gave, teaches her to torture, much as we torment our captives in Brian's Close or elsewhere; but knights, nobles, gentlemen,--they are my brethren. We slay each other in generous emulation,--in the glorious excitement of battle,--but we torture them not. _Noblesse oblige._"
"I cannot believe in the distinction; and you will find out I am right some day, and that the blood of your victims, the groans of your captives, will be visited on your head."
"Osric, you are one of the conquered race,--is it not so? Sometimes I doubted it."
"I am one of your victims; and I would sooner be of the sufferers than of the tyrants."
"I can say no more; something has spoilt a noble nature. Do you not dread Brian's return?"