but has his pockets full of fair ladies' tokens: not a
barefooted friar but rules a princess.

C. Pama. Creeping, I opine, into widows' houses, and for a pretence
making long prayers.

C. Wal. Don't quote Scripture here, sir, especially in that gross
literal way! The new lights here have taught us that Scripture's
saying one thing, is a certain proof that it means another. Except,
by the bye, in one text.

C. Pama. What's that?

C. Wal. 'Ask, and it shall be given you.'

C. Pama. Ah! So we are to take nothing literally, that they may
take literally everything themselves?

C. Wal. Humph! As for your text, see if they do not saddle it on
us before the day is out, as glibly as ever you laid it on them.
Here comes the lady's tyrant, of whom I told you.

[Conrad advances from the Hut.]

Con. And what may Count Walter's valour want here?

[Count Walter turns his back.]

C. Pama. I come, Sir Priest, from Andreas, king renowned
Of Hungary, ambassador unworthy
Unto the Landgravine, his saintly daughter;
And fain would be directed to her presence.

Con. That is as I shall choose. But I'll not stop you.
I do not build with straw. I'll trust my pupils
To worldlings' honeyed tongues, who make long prayers,
And enter widows' houses for pretence.
There dwells the lady, who has chosen too long
The better part, to have it taken from her.
Besides that with strange dreams and revelations
She has of late been edified.

C. Wal. Bah! but they will serve your turn--and hers.

Con. What do you mean?

C. Wal. When you have cut her off from child and friend, and even
Isentrudis and Guta, as I hear, are thrust out by you to starve, and
she sits there, shut up like a bear in a hole, to feed on her own
substance; if she has not some of these visions to look at, how is
she, or any other of your poor self-gorged prisoners, to help
fancying herself the only creature on earth?

Con. How now? Who more than she, in faith and practice, a living
member of the Communion of Saints? Did she not lately publicly
dispense in charity in a single day five hundred marks and more? Is
it not my continual labour to keep her from utter penury through her
extravagance in almsgiving? For whom does she take thought but for
the poor, on whom, day and night, she spends her strength? Does she
not tend them from the cradle, nurse them, kiss their sores, feed
them, bathe them, with her own hands, clothe them, living and dead,
wi