And always the King would bow, graciously
and without haste, to his shouting people.... He laughed to find
himself already at rehearsal of the gesture.
It was strange, though, that in this glorious fief of his so many
persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, suspicious of
all other moving things (with reason), and roused from their incurious
and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, like a resistless
eagle, swept uncomfortably near as he passed on some by-errand of the
more bright and windy upper-world. East and north they had gone
yearly, for so many centuries, these dumb peasants, to fight out their
master's uncomprehended quarrel, and to manure with their carcasses
the soil of France and of Scotland. Give these serfs a king, now, who
(being absolute), might dare to deal in perfect equity with rich and
poor, who with his advent would bring Peace into England as his bride,
as Trygaeus did very anciently in Athens--"And then," the priest
paraphrased, "may England recover all the blessings she has lost, and
everywhere the glitter of active steel will cease.
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