"Your pious will be obeyed!" replied Warwick. "We will see if mercy
can effect in others what thy pardon effects in me. And now, my
liege, no longer must these walls confine thee. The chambers of the
palace await their sovereign. What ho, there!" and going to the door
he threw it open, and agreeably to the orders he had given below, all
the officers left in the fortress stood crowded together in the small
anteroom, bareheaded, with tapers in their hands, to conduct the
monarch to the halls of his conquered foe.

At the sudden sight of the earl, these men, struck involuntarily and
at once by the grandeur of his person and his animated aspect, burst
forth with the rude retainer's cry, "A Warwick! a Warwick!"

"Silence!" thundered the earl's deep voice. "Who names the subject in
the sovereign's presence? Behold your king!" The men, abashed by the
reproof, bowed their heads and sank on their knees, as Warwick took a
taper from the table, to lead the way from the prison.

Then Henry turned slowly, and gazed with a lingering eye upon the
walls which even sorrow and solitude had endeared. The little
oratory, the crucifix, the relics, the embers burning low on the
hearth, the rude time-piece,--all took to his thoughtful eye an almost
human aspect of melancholy and omen; and the bird, roused, whether by
the glare of the lights, or the recent shout of the men, opened its
bright eyes, and fluttering restlessly to and fro, shrilled out its
favourite sentence, "Poor Henry! poor Henry!--wicked men!--who would
be a king?"

"Thou hearest it, Warwick?" said Henry, shaking his head.