Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/482

RV 414 (Rh) eschew the stoop of the falcon, receiving him rather upon his beak than upon his wing, affairs, as I do conceive, might have had a different face, and we might then, in a more bellicose manner, have maintained that affray. Nevertheless, I would not be understood to speak anything in disregard of Julian Avenel, whom I saw fall fighting manfully with his face to his enemy, which hath banished from my memory the unseemly term of "meddling coxcomb", with which it pleased him something rashly to qualify my advice, and for which, had it pleased Heaven and the saints to have prolonged the life of that excellent person, I had it bound upon my soul to have put him to death with my own hand.'

'Sir Piercie,' said the abbot, at length interrupting him, 'our time allows brief leisure to speak what might have been.'

'You are right, most venerable lord and father,' replied the incorrigible Euphuist; 'the preterite, as grammarians have it, concerns frail mortality less than the future mood, and indeed our cogitations respect chiefly the present. In a word, I am willing to head all who will follow me, and offer such opposition as manhood and mortality may permit, to the advance of the English, though they be my own countrymen; and be assured, Piercie Shafton will measure his length, being five feet ten inches, on the ground as he stands, rather than give two yards in retreat, according to the usual motion in which we retrograde.'

'I thank you, sir knight,' said the abbot, 'and I doubt not that you would make your words good; but it is not the will of Heaven that carnal weapons should rescue us. We are called to endure, not to resist, and may not waste the blood of our innocent commons in vain. Fruitless opposition becomes not men of our profession; they have my commands to resign the sword and the spear. God and Our Lady have not blessed our banner.'

'Bethink you, reverend lord,' said Piercie Shafton, very eagerly, 'ere you resign the defence that is in your power; there are many posts near the entry of this village, where brave men might live or die to the advantage; and I have this additional motive to make defence, the safety, namely, of a fair friend, who, I hope, hath escaped the hands of the heretics.'