C. Hugo [aside].  Up, Count; you are spokesman.

3d Count.  Exalted Prince,
Whose peerless knighthood, like the remeant sun,
After too long a night, regilds our clay,
Late silvered by the reflex lunar beams
Of your celestial lady’s matron graces—­

Abbot [aside].  Ut vinum optimum amati mei
Dulciter descendens!

3 Count.  Think not we mean to praise or disapprove—­
The acts of saintly souls must only plead
In foro conscientiae:  grosser minds,
Whose humbler aim is but the public weal,
Know of no mesh which holds them:  yet, great Prince,
Some dare not see their sovereign’s strength postponed
To private grace, and sigh, that generous hearts,
And ladies’ tenderness, too oft forgetting
That wisdom is the highest charity,
Will interfere, in pardonable haste,
With heaven’s stern providence.

Lewis.  We see your drift. 
Go, sirrah [to a Page]; pray the Princess to illumine
Our conclave with her beauties.  ’Tis our manner
To hear no cause, of gentle or of simple,
Unless the accused and the accuser both
Meet face to face.

3d Count.  Excuse, high-mightiness,—­ We bring no accusation; facts, your Highness, Wait for your sentence, not our praejudicium.

Lewis.  Give us the facts, then, Sir; in the lady’s presence,
Her nearness to ourselves—­perchance her reasons—­
May make them somewhat dazzling.

Abbot.  Nay, my Lord;
I, as a Churchman, though with these your nobles
Both in commission and opinion one,
Am yet most loth, my Lord, to set my seal
To aught which this harsh world might call complaint
Against a princely saint—­a chosen vessel—­
An argosy celestial—­in whom error
Is but the young luxuriance of her grace. 
The Count of Varila, as bound to neither,
For both shall speak, and all which late has passed
Upon the matter of this famine open.

C. Wal.  Why, if I must speak out—­then I’ll confess
To have stood by, and seen the Landgravine
Do most strange deeds; and in her generation
Show no more wit than other babes of light. 
First, she has given away, to starving rascals,
The stores of grain she might have sold, good lack! 
For any price she asked; has pawned your jewels,
And mortgaged sundry farms, and all for food. 
Has sunk vast sums in fever-hospitals,
For rogues whom famine sickened—­almshouses
For sluts whose husbands died—­schools for their brats. 
Most sad vagaries! but there’s worse to come. 
The dulness of the Court has ruined trade: 
The jewellers and clothiers don’t come near us;
The sempstresses, my lord, and pastrycooks
Have quite forgot their craft; she has turned all heads
And made the ladies starve, and wear old clothes,
And run about with her to nurse the sick,
Instead of putting gold in circulation
By balls, sham-fights, and dinners; ’tis most sad, sir,
But she has swept your treasury out as clean—­
As was the widow’s cruse, who fed Elijah.