the King
of these outrages? Why did you take upon yourself to punish them by
your own authority?" But Becket, turning sharply towards him, said:
"Hugh! how proudly you lift up your head! When the rights of the
Church are violated, I shall wait for no man's permission to avenge
them. I will give to the King the things that are the King's, but to
God the things that are God's. It is my business, and I alone will see
to it." Taking up such an attitude in front of four men who had come
hot-foot to Canterbury with the express determination to seek an
excuse for killing him, Becket was sealing his own fate.

For the first time in the interview the Archbishop had assumed
an attitude of defiance; the fury of the knights broke at once
through the bonds which had partially restrained it, and
displayed itself openly in those impassioned gestures which
are now confined to the half-civilized nations of the South
and East, but which seem to have been natural to all classes
of medieval Europe. Their eyes flashed fire, they sprang upon
their feet, and, rushing close up to him, gnashed their teeth,
twisting their long gloves, and wildly threw their arms above
their heads. Fitzurse exclaimed: "You threaten us--you
threaten us! are you going to excommunicate us all?"

Becket sprang up from his couch at this insulting demonstration, and
in the state of great excitement into which he could fall when roused,
he flung down his defiant challenge that all the swords in England
could not shake his obedience to the Pope. The four knights, goaded to
fury by other passionate words, left him, shouting, "To arms! to
arms!" They made their way with an excited throng to the great
gateway, where they armed, while the doors were closed to shut off the
monastery from communication with the town. The Archbishop seems to
have been fully alive to his danger, and yet he persistently refused
to take the smallest measure for his safety, opening with his own
hands the door from the cloisters into the north transept which some
of the monks had closed and barred immediately after they had dragged
the Archbishop into the nearly dark building.

Vespers had just begun when the murderers entered, but the singing of
that service was never completed. The fear of sacrilege induced the
knights to try to drag the defenceless Archbishop out of the
Cathedral, but he struggled with such vigour, flinging one of the men
down on t