There was within him, he perceived afterwards, a conflict without movement.  It was as when two men wrestle, their limbs are locked, they are motionless, they appear to be at rest, but in truth they are striving with might and main.

So he remained all that night in this agony, not knowing that he did aught but suffer; he saw the light on the wall, and heard the cocks crow—­at least he remembered these things afterwards.  But his release did not come until the morning; and of that release, and its event, and how it came about, I will now tell you.

How Sir John went again to the cell:  and of what he saw there

Ecce audivimus eam in Ephrata:  invenimus eam in campis silvae.

Behold we have heard of it in Euphrata:  we have found it in the fields of the wood.—­Ps. cxxxi. 6.

XII

It is strange to think that other men went about their business in the palace, and knew nothing of what was passing.  It is more strange that that morning I said mass in the country and did not faint for fear or sorrow.  But it is always so, by God’s loving-kindness, for no man could bear to live if he knew all that was happening in the world at one time. [Sir John adds some trite reflections of an obvious character.]....

There was a little heaviness upon me that morning, but I think no more than there had been every day since Master Richard had left us.  It was not until noon that a strange event happened to me.  This day was Wednesday after Corpus Christi, the sixth day since he was gone.

There was only one man that knew aught of what was passing in the interior world, and that was the ankret in the cell against the abbey, but of that you shall hear in the proper place.

Of what fell on that day I heard from an old priest whom I saw afterwards, and who was in the palace at that time.  He was chaplain to my lord cardinal and his name was....

He told me that very early in the morning my lord sent for him and told him that he would hold an examination of Master Richard that day after dinner, to see if he should be put on his trial for bewitching the King.  There were none who doubted that he had bewitched the King, for his grace had sat in a stupor for two days, ever since he had heard the tidings from the holy youth.  He heard his masses each morning with a fallen countenance, and took a little food in private, and slept in his clothes sitting in his chair; and spoke to none, and, it seemed, heard none.  Though he had been always of a serious and quiet mind, loving to pray and to hear preaching more than to talk, yet this was the first of those strange visitations of God that fell upon him so frequently in his later years.  Those then (and especially my lord cardinal) who now saw him in such a state, did not doubt that there was sorcery in the matter, and that Master Richard was the sorcerer; for the tale of the Quinte Essence—­of which at that time men knew nothing—­and how that he could not say paternoster when it was put to him;—­all this was run about the court like fire.