master; guide him, for he needeth guidance, subtly as
to-day ye would have guided him. I will not take you from him for this
cause, that there is little need in one house of two that think alike.
One sufficeth. For two houses with like minds are stronger than one
that is bicephalous. Therefore serve you well Cranmer as in my day I
served well the great Cardinal; so at his death, even as I at
Wolsey's, ye may rise very high.'

He went swiftly into his little cabinet, and returning, had in his
hand a little book.

'Read well in this,' he said, 'where much I have read. You shall see
in it mine own annotations. This is "_Il Principe_" of Macchiavelli;
there is none other book like it in the world. Study of it well: read
it upon your walks. I am a simple man, yet hath it made me.'

Shadows were falling into the gallery, for the descending sun had come
behind the dark, tall elms beyond the river.

'Upon my faith,' Cromwell said, 'and as I hope to enter into Paradise
by the aid of Christ the King that commended faithful servants, I tell
you I had great joy when you told me this woman's cousin had come into
these parts. But greater joy than any were mine could I discern in
this land a disciple that could carry on my work. As yet I have seen
none; yet ponder well upon this book. God may work in thee, as in me,
great changes by its study.... Get you gone.'

He continued long to pace the gallery, his hands behind his back, his
cap pulled over his narrow eyes; it grew dusk so that his figure could
scarce be seen where it was at the further end. He looked from the
casement up into the moon, small and tenuous in the pale western
skies. He had been going over in his mind the details of how he had
commanded Culpepper to be brought before the King. And at the last
when he considered again that Culpepper might well strike his cousin
dead at his feet, and that then she would have no tongue to stand
against calumnies withal, he uttered the words:

'I think I hold them.'

And, pondering upon the wonderful destiny that had brought him up from
a trooper in Italy to these high places, he saluted the moon with his
crooked forefinger--for the moon was the president at his birth.

'Why,' he uttered aloud, 'I have survived four queens' days.'

For Katharine of Aragon he had seen die; and Anne Boleyn had died on
the scaffold; and Jane Seymour was dead in childbed; and now, with the
news from Cleves, Anne's reign was over and done with.