"Becket. I once was out with Henry in the days
When Henry loved me, and we came upon
A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still
I reach'd my hand and touch'd; she did not stir;
The snow had frozen round her, and she sat
Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs.
Look! how this love, this mother, runs thro' all
The world God made--even the beast--the bird!
John of Salisbury. Ay, still a lover of the beast and bird?
But these arm'd men--will you not hide yourself?
Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Saltwood Castle,
To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood
Too long o'er this hard egg, the world, and send
Her whole heart's heat into it, till it break
Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself.
Becket. There was a little fair-hair'd Norman maid
Lived in my mother's house: if Rosamund is
The world's rose, as her name imports her--she
Was the world's lily.
John of Salisbury. Ay, and what of her?
Becket. She died of leprosy."


But the part of Rosamund, her innocent ignorance especially, is not
very readily intelligible, not quite persuasive, and there is almost
a touch of the burlesque in her unexpected appearance as a monk. To
weave that old and famous story of love into the terribly complex
political intrigue was a task almost too great. The character of
Eleanor is perhaps more successfully drawn in the Prologue than in
the scene where she offers the choice of the dagger or the bowl, and