And I marvel, sir,
At those who do not feel the majesty,--
By heaven, I'd almost said the holiness,--
That circles round a fair and virtuous woman:
There is a gentle purity that breathes
In such a one, mingled with chaste respect,
And modest pride of her own excellence,--
A shrinking nature, that is so adverse
To aught unseemly, that I could as soon
Forget the sacred love I owe to heav'n,
As dare, with impure thoughts, to taint the air
Inhal'd by such a being: than whom, my liege,
Heaven cannot look on anything more holy,
Or earth be proud of anything more fair. [_Exit_.
Gonzales, the monk, is despatched by the Queen to Bourbon in prison. At
the door he meets Margaret, who had bribed her way to her lover, and was
returning after ineffectual attempts to soothe him into submission,
shame-struck at the exposure of her mother's guilt. The Queen intrusts
Gonzales with a signet ring as the means of liberating him and conducting
him to the royal chamber. Bourbon is immovable; and in revenge upon the
Court, he falls in with a private scheme of Gonzales, which is to accept
of his liberty, and set off to the Court of Spain. The undisguising of the
treacherous monk is in these powerful lines: