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Joshua.I leave you here, my dear friends. It is late, and I must resume my services as warden in the Tower. Ah! I am not free like you! A turnkey, you see, is only a sort of prisoner. Fare you well, Jane. Fare you well, Gilbert. Good lack! my friends, how happy I am to see you happy! By the way, Gilbert, when is the wedding to be?

Gilbert.A week hence; eh, Jane?

Joshua.By my faith! the day after to-morrow will be Christmas. This is the season of gifts and good wishes. But I have nothing to wish for you. It is impossible to imagine more love in a lover or more beauty in a sweetheart. You are happy!

Gilbert.Dear Joshua! And you—are you not happy?

Joshua.Neither happy nor unhappy. I have renounced everything. Look, Gilbert [opening his cloak and disclosing a bunch of keys hanging at his belt], these prison-keys, jingling always at your belt, they talk, they inspire all sorts of philosophic thoughts. When I was young, I was like other men, in love a whole day, ambitious a whole month, mad a whole year. It was under King Henry the Eighth that I was young. A strange man was that same Henry the Eighth! a man who changed wives as a woman changes dresses. He cast off the first, he had the second's head cut off, he had the third disembowelled; as for the fourth, he pardoned her and simply turned her out-of-doors, but, in revenge, the fifth lost her head. This is not the tale of Blue Beard that I am telling you, lovely Jane, but the history of Henry the Eighth. In those days, I was busied with the religious wars: I fought on both