THE CHANGE.
What a wonderful softening thing is adversity. It may come in the
shape of poverty; it may come in the severity of calamity; it may
come in the loss of a friend; or it may come suddenly by seeming
accident. But when it does really come, when the poor mortal, great
and powerful, is made to feel it--oh! how heartily does he desire the
return of his mother's tenderness, or his father's generosity.
A great man like Wolsey, a companion to one of England's proudest,
though not her best nor her worst monarch, one of superior ability,
as well as most absolute authority, was likely to feel the neglect of
such a prince; and, falling from the favor of ambition, his great
mind was softened to think of the friends of his youth.
Ambition is a bold horse; he mounts his fences well; he leaps over
walls, gates, ditches, and hedges, and goes at a slashing pace over
the country. He requires to be well kept in hand, and not to be
pushed too hard at first. He must be well trained, well directed,
and curbed in at first.
He is apt to be like Grey Hermit, the royal huntsman's old favorite,
so well depicted in Grant's picture of the 'Queen's Stag Hounds.'
Davis had enough to do to keep him in order for the first burst of
the hunt; for he was '_wild as the wild deer_' and threw himself over
his fences like a mad horse; but by dint of a master manager, he
would sober down into a steady pace, and 'shine at the last when all
others were in shade.'
So, affliction coming upon the ambitious man, sobers him down to the
steady realities of his work.
The Cardinal had one day's respite from the cares of pomp and state.
He had been expecting to be called upon to give up the great seal,
and well knew that when his enemies once got the advantage of him,
they would not long rest without injuring him.
He had lost his master's favor; he had loved that master. Yes, with
all his pomp and greatness, Wolsey never was otherwise, or felt
otherwise, than a servant. Had he obtained the summit of his
ambition, and been made Pope, he might have then assumed a very
different tone with Henry. He would have been removed from outward
subjection; and his was master-mind enough to rule princes absolutely
under the tiara of the papal glory.
It was not to be. The subject whom the King had exalted as his
favorite was to be an example to all England, as Napoleon was to all
the world, that power, when too much self-exalted, is to be humbled
very low before it departs, or before a man departs from it.
Wolsey perhaps never was greater than in his humiliation, when he
lost the favor of the King; and Napoleon never was greater than when
on the Rock of St. Helena. Ambition was destroyed in them both.
Happy they whose only ambition in this life is to subdue themselves.
Experience will soon teach the proudest they are unhappy, though they
subdue kingdoms; and experience will soon prove that the humbler a
man is, so much the more he makes others happy, and promotes his own
comfort.
The Cardinal rose at his usual hour, read his despatches, answered
the messengers from various quarters, and inquired after his guests.
He sent to say that he would be happy to receive them in his own room
at nine o'clock. In the meantime they had been supplied with all the
bountiful care of hospitality, and were themselves softened, all of
them, towards the Cardinal.
At nine o'clock the interview was to take place between him and those
early friends, whom he had been instrumental in uniting by a bond
which he would have been glad to have called his own.
There is a strange sensation in hearts long estranged coming together
again. Even in the common intercourse of life, when accident causes
two friends to meet, between whom, in early years, the pure
friendship of social good-will had existed, how does the heart expand
with the remembrance of incidents, events, accidents, or words
wherein was no guile, but the simple fervor of youthful respect!
That heart which cannot so feel in love, will know no pleasure in the
prospect of meeting its generation when it rises from the dust. Oh!
that ever a word or a deed should make the human heart unkind! Men
ought to learn to love one another here, that they may be happy
hereafter.
When years have parted friends between whom love was as a precious
pearl, the very bond of the soul's peace, and a day brings them
together, it is indeed a foretaste of joy which immortal spirits only
can fully appreciate. It is something like to a glorious,
everlasting sunshine, when clouds, and tempests, and dangers, and
deaths, and darkness, and night have passed away, and one eternal day
smiles upon the soul in bliss.
Wolsey's heart was softened by his coming fall. It had commenced; it
was about to be severed from greatness; and no wonder that its early
impressions of love, the desire of shining in the eyes of one whom it
then accounted a marvel of acquirement to be admired by an
enlightened mind, should return with vivacity into the soul divested
of the glitter of the world.
Cardinal Wolsey had transferred his first love for Ellen to ambition.
He had now had twenty years' experience of the tortuous paths of
human greatness, and had found that the smiles of men could never
rest long upon one object; that to serve even a king, a man must
never be exalted by him, but be always ready to give up all into the
hands of the Giver. What such a man, with such a partner for life as
Ellen, might have been, is another question--it can but be a surmise.
Ellen, however, was in his house, she whom he once had loved with a
devotion even beyond the wisdom of Solomon to comprehend; and though
another had loved her with an ardor perhaps more truly
humble--certainly not more noble--yet even at that moment Wolsey felt
that between them, though years had passed away, there was, there
must be, an honorable estimation. He had not felt this in the day of
his pride; it was only when he was humbled that this returned to him.
It returned to him too in the sweetest way it could possibly
come--that of being a benefactor to his former benefactors. His
hospitality, the last opportunity he ever had of showing it at York
Place, was the most gratifying to his spirit; and that day of
calmness intervening between his last presiding as Chancellor, and
his resigning the office, was spent in the happiest society he had
ever enjoyed.
The hour came for the interview. Ellen felt it--Ellen knew the
secret of Wolsey's heart--Latimer, his friend, knew it also, though
Wolsey had believed them ignorant of what he schooled himself to
think was his weakness. De Freston never did suppose Wolsey to have
been attached to his daughter.
It was well they had all rested a night under the same roof
previously to their interview. It was well, also, that proud Alice
De Clinton had departed; it was well, likewise, that the Cardinal's
state affairs permitted him a day's calm, that he might be
disencumbered of his consequence. All things favored the interview,
and the parties met with mutual respect, the sure forerunner to a
happy conversation.