POET LAUREATE.
[Irritated.] My love for hinds I leave and cherish a noble prince,
Generous and well born--nor tainted by low base deeds;
The prince who hath vanquished his foemen. Whatever the cost might be,
Strong in the Faith is he! Heresy's dreaded scourge!

PEHR. [Springs to his feet.] Do you mean it seriously or are you
joking?

POET LAUREATE. I mean it seriously, Your Highness. How should
anything else be--

PEHR. Indeed! It is in all seriousness, then, that you praise my
low actions?

POET LAUREATE. Your Highness stands as high above low actions as
the sun above a mud-puddle!

PEHR. I know you and your gang, counterfeiter! You call me, who
foreswore my faith, the Defender of the Faith; you say that I, a
bell-ringer's son, am of royal descent; that I am generous, who
refused to grant the first humble petition presented since my
coming to the throne! I know you, for your kind is to be found the
world over. You live for thought and immortality, you say; but you
are never seen when a thought is to be born; you are never felt
when it comes to a question of immortality. But around heaped up
dishes, in the sunlight of affluence and power, there you swarm,
like fat meat flies, only to fly away that you may set black specks
upon those who can let themselves be slain for both thought and