sides. That was the best course then. In any case the question was a very knotty one. It was a matter of being for or against the Pope. The King's men hung those who were for the Pope, but they burned those who were against him. The indifferent—those who were neither for nor against—they burned or hung, indifferently. Let him save himself who could. Yes, the rope. No, the stake. Neither yes nor no, the rope or the stake. I who speak to you have smelt the smoke more than once, and I am not sure that I was not strung up two or three times. Those were fine times, almost like these. Yes, I fought for it all. Deuce take me if I know now for whom or for what I fought. If anyone mentions Master Luther or Pope Paul the Third to me, I shrug my shoulders. You see, Gilbert, when your hair is grey, you mustn't go back to the ideas you fought for and the women you made love to when you were twenty. Women and ideas alike appear very ugly and old and toothless and wrinkled and paltry and foolish. That is my story. Now I have retired from public affairs. I am neither King's soldier nor Pope's soldier; I am a gaoler in the Tower. I fight for nobody, and I put everybody behind the bars. I am a gaoler and I am an old man. I have one foot in the prison and the other in the grave. It is I who pick up the pieces of all the ministers and favourites who get broken in the Queen's palace. It is most diverting. And then I have a little child whom I love, and you two whom I love also, and if you are happy I am happy!
Gilbert.In that case, be happy, Joshua; eh, Jane?
Joshua.I can do nothing for your happiness, but Jane can do everything. You love her! I shall
