Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/194

174 there is none in me, but for the singular love and entire affection which God, my conscience, and honesty have graffed and nourished in my heart to my sovereign and most benign and gentle master. As for peace, when I remember that God is the Author of it, yea, peace itself, and that Christ praised always peaceable men all the time of his being among men visibly, and at his departing from them recommended most specially peace, I cannot but praise peace, desire peace, and help to my power the advancement of peace. I see, and so doth all his Majesty's council, as both I and you have heard them say when they are together, the continuance of the war, for the charge thereof so uncertain, the ways and means for the relief thereof so strait, and at such ebb, as my heart bleedeth in my body when I think of it. So as we had peace to the King's Majesty's satisfaction, I would gladly be sacrificed for it, if my death might help forward the matter.'

Round the earnestness of the persuasion an English humour flickered playfully. 'I remember,' he said, 'President Scory's tale to me at my last being with the Emperor, of one that, being condemned to die by a certain king, which had an ass wherein he had great felicity, the man offered—to save his life—that within a twelve-month he could make the king's ass to speak; whereunto the king accorded; and being said unto the man by a friend of his, What! it is impossible; hold thy peace, quoth he, car ou le Roy mourera ou l'asne mourera,