it is tedious to them to stay in this place of assurance The whilst he thus goes temporising he was called to end his days in troublesom affairs as you shall hear After than Elise and Andronico more unfortunate then malicious had been punished for a fault they had not committed as the Psalmist says Paying with great extortion and rack-use What they ne'r truly borrowed with abuse Pyrrhe and Herman esteemed that the death of these innocents would be a satisfaction and covering to their fault lived though not with interior assurance for an ill conscience serves for a Judg and Hangman to it self yet at least with an exterior safety that promised them an apparent nonpunishment For they were not only exempt of the accusation of this matter but also of suspition to have attempted any thing against Philippin Pyrrhe repairs in part his honour by the ill usage wherewith he treated the miserable Isabel making it appear by it that her ill life had been extremely unpleasing to to him And this Maid being fallen from this high fate of prosperity where she had seen herself in the company of Philippin and now reduced to a prison in which besides the deprivation of liberty she experimented excessive cruelty not knowing where to find more patience to sustain the force of so cruel a persecution I will not fill these leaves with the multitude of her complaints with which she filled her dark cabbin that less deaf to her complaints then the ears of her father seemed to suffer at her pains by its eccho and â—ound And I believe if Pyrrhe had heard them he must have been of marble or have had pitty to have produced in the world a creature so miserably unfortunate But not content to stop his ears at her dolorous griefs and to the protestations she made to live better hereafter and to give him as much cause to love her in her repentance as she had given him to hate her for her dissolute life Nor would he that his eyes should see the pittifull estate she was reduced to for fear to have had some compassion on her An hundred times he had murdered her with his own hands if nature had not strongly resisted against such a crime and if the force of blood had not withstood so bloody a design But he believed that this perpetual imprisonment and the barbarous usage he exercised on this miserable Caitiff would in a short time deliver him of her whose life was as odious as her death desired And it may be God who hates hearts that are hardned and unpittifull already displeased with the murder of Philipin throws on the heads of Pyrrhe and Herman a judgment without mercy because they had been without mercy Although the Israelites among the Egyptians committed great sins and were carried to detestable idolatry for which the yoke of a cruel slavery fell on their heads yet in the midst of their wickedness calling on the mercy of God his eternal goodness hears their cryes and hasted to their deliverance Achab and Manasse were evil Princes but their prayers drawn from their hearts by the strength of their tribulations made incontinently their peace with God which inclined their aid It is true that Isabel cannot be excused in having stain'd the honour of her family by her ill carriage But it may be that being converted to God in midst of her fighs he heard favorably her complaints and resolved to pluck her from this chain to the end that being delivered from the hands of this tyrant she might give herself to his service in the quality of a Nun to serve in holiness and justice at the foot of his Altars even to the last hour of her life Now I desire that we should remark admire and adore this divine Conductor who brings her to this end by marvellous turnings and sweetness incomparable We have seen in the course of this history how Herman was induced by Pyrrhe to the murder of Philippin and how he was assisted by Roboald an antient servant of their house in this homicide and it was by this Roboald that love made traiâ—oâ— to himself that this crime is discovered which forgetfulness seemed to have wrapped up in a perpetual silence But how enters love into this heart it was by the gate of pitty false gate that deceivest ordinarily the most wise Pyrrhe discharges on him the keeping of Isabel O it is an ill charge for a man a fair Maid Yet in the beginning he executes with fidelity the commandment of his master which was To shut her up straitly to feed her poorly in brief to exercise on her all kind of cruelties But in the end the water of the tears of Isabel pursue this heart of stone and the Lover with the beauties of her face draws this breast of iron to a yielding condescension Such strength hath a pleasing form of which all the force is in the sweetness but as much loved as it is pleasing Beauty hath an ascendant power and invitable on the fiercest courages the most cruel Tygres may be tamed and made familiar by an amirable conversation Isabel in the beginning of her imprisonment by a high and arrogant humour contributed much to the ill usage that Roboald made her feel For there is nothing more odious and less insupportable to God and men then pride and cruelty But when experience Mistress of the least advised had taught her that as a bird taken in a snare the more it strives the more it fastens the knot and the more she desired to be free the stricter she was kept and that her despite drew on her a more severe punishment she begins to change her battery and to spin fine and to sow the skin of the Fox to that of the Lyon Her vain threats had served her to nothing it may be her smiles and the charms of her conversation would get her more advantage Of an angry and disdainfull she becomes plaintiff and a suppliant So that changing the fashion of her carriage she makes tender by little and little this savage courage that begins to use her with more sweetness from that to hearken to her then to behold her At last as a Man that cannot be always a Wolf to another Man but hath a secret advocate in his humanity that perswades him to mildness lets himself be taken by the ears and sees his heart ravished by the eyes For both pitty and beauty gave such assaults into the thoughts of Roboald that forgetting the faith he had sworne to his Master he esteems it would be impiety to obey him any longer in so savage and unnatural a commission to the prejudice of so many graces that appeared in the face of this fair Prisoner And certainly the advantages that affections of Love have of those of Friendship are such that those that are touched with the one make more difficulty to prejudice the other even till their faults seem not only pardonable but commendable and rather worthy of glory
him like the shadow the body The guilty may well be in places of security says a wise Antient but not in assurance for they always see the knife of vengeance divine or humane hanging and shaken over their heads their sleeps are troubled with a thousand fearfull visions as if they had drunk the juice of the herb called Ophinsa Their own thoughts serve them for a hangman to torment them with horror of their faults that they enjoy no quiet but it passes suddenly from them This far remove hath not appeased the rage of Pyrrhe and Herman seconded in all his designs by him which would not be appeased these are the importunate stingings which shout threats and invective speeches in the ears of Philippin These angry elfs which promise nothing less to themselves prick him to death esteeming they had reason to take the life of him that had ravished their honour they make about Gold-mount a thousand secret meetings accompanied with strangers resolving to spend the remnant of their fortunes in this quarrel To the greatest the least enemies are redoubtable there needs but a little Viper to pluck down a great Bull. If they would but have retired he would very willingly have made them a bridge of gold but they cruelly desirous of his blooâ— would not be satisfied but with his life which he is not resoâ—â—â— to abandon O how great are the multitude of evils which inviron the tabernacle of the sinner This miserable man sees himself possessed within with a domestick devil so much the more dangerous that he esteems her an Angel of light adoring his prison and his shackles and besieged without by these furious revenges which are as sowed to his choler of whom he thinks to have always their knife in his throat See what it is to serve strange gods and to abandon himself to unlawful passions which make continual wars without truce and give no rest night nor day O how pittifull and bitter a thing it is to forsake the way of vertue and how assured he is of shipwrack that loses the Tramontane of the grace of God His case is desperately forlorn Who laws of GOD and Church doth scorn And to his own will doth confine The laws both moral and divine Vast seas of trouble do surround His soul whose joy in grief is droun'd Though outwardly he surfeiteth in bliss Within the Chaos of a black abyss And blacker Conscience worm-like gnaws and bites Imbittering all his pleasures and delights Conscious of odious crimes he dares not stare On the bright Sun o're-clouded with despair Which racks his soul so hourly that each breath Presents pale horror and eternal death Nor pomp nor power nor prowess can withstand The stroke of vengeance or the dreadfull hand Of Heaven where 't is his pleasure to decree Or doom us damn'd who can pronounce us free Where conscience doth accuse our Crimes there do Appear both Judge and Executioner too What can one hope for but disasters Would you not say that the mercy of God shining upon the lines of his justice cals him by these â—â—rplexities in which he now finds himself But this Pharoah â—â—dned by all these wonders is not converted but persevering in this abominable train he dies in his sin precipitated into the red sea of a bloody trespass Yet nevertheless he obtains some respite to accomplish the measure of his pain by the excess of his fault For after hiving besought the Justices of those places to deliver him from the pursuits of the father and son which had conjured his ruine by the same arms he would have imployed for his defence he feared to have been taken forasmuch as Scevole seemed to favour the party of Pyrrhe counselling him to declare he had no intent against Philippin as for his Concubine which he would retire as being his daughter to take away the scandal and shame of his house Thus Philippin saw himself in midst of his enemies and that justice on his shoulders which he had besought for his defence VVho sees not in this a just judgment of God only this blind Lover takes no knowledge of it so strong are the inchantments wich which Isabel charmed him that besides the despight to see herself pursued and so shamefully qualified by her father losing all respect and natural love both to father and brother counsels Philippin to make an assembly of his vassals and friends and to cut all his enemies in peeces But as an antient Consul said to an Emperor It is more easie to commit a murther of an adultery then to defend it These crimes are not so easily justified as they are practised there are few friends that will venture their lives goods and honours in hazard of so vile a business when it comes in question to set upon the justice of the Prince they will think thrice Other crimes being more particular are more easie to obtain pardon but that which is publike and lesae majestatiâ— according to the rules of the best Politicks ought to be irremissible 't is a baseness which it were impiety to pardon or to pitty those who commit it ought to perish for an example Nor is there one of the neighbours of Philippin that will second him in an enterprise so unreasonable so dangerous and full of ruine On the contrary they complain of his cruelty and lament the misery of Elise detesting Isabel as a monster cause of all the misfortunes of this young Lord and the ruine of his house By the impossibility to revenge himself and withstand he shrinketh and doubting that this quarrel being in the heat Scevole should take occasion to persecute him he sees himself brought to a shamefull capitulation coming again to â—â—â—ers and submission to Pyrrhe promising that he would diâ—â—ndamage him of all his pretended wrongs having been beaâ—â—n and forced to pay for his amendment and to procure the advancement of Herman protesting to appeal to Rome the sentence which had confirmed his marriage with Elise and to imploy his uttermost means to break it swearing never to have other wise but Isabel whom he esteemed his legitimate Bride ordaining his subjects to hold and esteem her by that quality He sees Herman in secret upon whom he hath same kind of power helped by the tears and supplications of his sister he wins him so as he brings his father to this agreement who upon hope to cover his honour somwhat by this promise returns to Vaupre leaving Philippin in peace at Gold-mount But we shall find in the end it was but a peace dissembled according to the speech of the wise man which says Peace peace where there is no peace The whiles this miserable Lord respires if a man troubled with a thousand fears within can have any repose although freed of outward combats We will take this time to go to the Town to see what Elise doth also the long ceremonious formality of the Ecclesiastical justice in these appeals by reason of the distance of places
she had plunged my innocence To which this worthy Churchman answered That it was the work of a good and true Christian not to render evil for evil but good for evil by the example of him that being cursed cursed not again but being unjustly persecuted presented his cheâ—k to blows his face to be spit on and his body to the murderers without making more noise then a tender lamb whose throat is cut And that he must be more spaâ—ing of the time that was left him to acknowledge his faults That it was question of a minute whereon eternity did depend That it would be less judiciously done to losâ— a Kingdom that hath no end for a moment of ransom that it was better to swallow this draught of bitterness as a man of courage and not with cowardly fear and that it was the greatest of all baseness of the heart not to pardon an injury that revenge was the mark of a faint heart and effeminate a dangerous ulcer which invenomed his soul and made him bring forth a mortal canker Having now won thus much on the great courage of Andronico to pardon her his death that was the unjust cause of it it was easie for him to purge this soul which free noble and open of his own nature gives free passage to penitence which made an operation of a marvellous conversion a true change unto the right of God He confesses his sins with great compunction discovering all his heart with an extreme freedom adoring the hand of God laid heavy on his head and humbly kist the rod that chastised him to the end it might serve him for a rod of direction to bring him to the kingdom of God This worthy man pressed him hard to award this fault before that tribunal where falshood is a sacriledge and not lose himself in the way of Câ—in that denied the murder of his brother For as S. Peter said to Ananias one may easily deceive men by falshood but not God Yet still he firmly denies to have given any advice or had any design on the life of Philippin This at first aboard astonish'd Cyrille who carried by the vulgar opinion and violence of the conjecture doubts that an attempt so dishonest had hardened his heart by a foolish shame He gives him many examples on this subject But seeing on the one side his extreme earnestness in the accusation of the rest of his faults and a strong perseverance in the denial of the same he began to be perswaded he had not committed it Having then purged sufficiently his thoughts of his offence by a good absolution and having made him perform divers acts of contrition humility resignation and of renouncement of the world and submission to the will of God of patience hope faith and confidence in the goodness and mercies of God he raises him thus by little and little into the air of divine love Even as the heat of the fire loosens the flesh from the bones even so death that heretofore appeared so terrible to him seems now a sure and pleasing port where he may enjoy the eternity of peace which passes all understanding When these two hear to thus dissposed came to meet in the Chappel of the Prison whither these poor Patients were brought attending the hour of their suffering we must not marvel if their antient loves were renewed being they were not only prepared for pardon but also to charity which is no other thing but the â—ame dilection all cordial and sincere The Confessors after they had reconciled them to God reconciled them one unto the other with great facility For as the iron flies unto the loadstone as soon as the garlick is removed the presence of the diamond is taken away that gives it liberty to carry it self to that straw that draws it to it Even so those souls being delivered of the stinking garlick of hatred and the hard diamond of obstination were easily drawn to these acts of humility that without the assistance of grace one might rather desire then have hoped this condescension and to see their tears mingled whose blood must shortly be mingled upon a shamefull scaffold Here Elise confessed aloud that she had no other proof against Andronico for the death of Philippin but the common report and conjecture that the promise she had given in writing had brought him to that attempt to enjoy her in marriage There Andronico professed openly that as he had never so much as thought of that murder nor had ever been incited to it by Elise but only his despair had forced him to avouch this crime seeing he could not shun his punishment so by the same despair he had accused Elise to be guilty to make her perish for his revenge Some of the beholders esteemed these excuses as fained as they were most true And the Judges those inflexible Radamanthes mocked at these denials out of season The irrevocable sentence is pronounced by their mouths they have given it according to their consciences and conformable to the law Their ears are so accustomed to hear these excuses of offenders that they are to them as unnecessary songs for it is the custom of men to say they are innocent considering only their witnesses not their own consciences They imagine that this miserable pair being resolved to lose their lives intended to preserve some vain shadow of honour in saying they were innocent of so odious a crime but that being on the scaffold at the last hour of their death which is the rack of racks they would then declare all to the discharge of those that had judged and condemned them I will not here present the griefs of these two spirits being I think they cannot be comprehended nor express their complaints seeing their innocence was made guilty more by their inconsideration then by their malice Nor can describe their displeasure finding they were cause of one anothers loss You may judge that their griefs their complaints and displeasures were as pittifull as their affections were now sincere for in these extremities there is no more dissimulation no faining nor art and less colour it is no more but a plain simplicity Elise desires many times to take her last farewell of her parents But having heard that the news of her condemnation had caused her father to retire into the Country not being able to support the sight of so tragick a fortune of which there was no remedy And that the grief of this had given such an assault to the heart of Sohpie her mother that she was in bed sick unto death she obtains permission to write to them to make known unto them in these last words the feeling she had of their sorrows which was more incomparably then what she had of her own SIR I Complain not to see my self abandoned by you in an instant where the only hope consists in not expecting any I not only approve your retreat but should have counselled it if my advice had been demanded