committed no offence further than this, that they had carried out a
little too literally and strictly the orders of their master.

A long pause had ensued--a pause full of expectation and anxiety for all
who were assembled in the hall. Only Catharine reclined calmly in her
chair, and with beaming eyes looked across to Thomas Seymour, whose
handsome countenance betrayed to her the gratification and satisfaction
which he felt at this clearing up of her mysterious night-wandering.

At last the king arose, and, bowing low before his consort, said in
a loud, full-toned voice: "I have deeply and bitterly injured you, my
noble wife; and as I publicly accused you, I will also publicly ask your
forgiveness! You have a right to be angry with me; for it behooved me,
above all, to believe with unshaken firmness in the truth and honor of
my wife. My lady, you have made a brilliant vindication of yourself; and
I, the king, first of all bow before you, and beg that you may forgive
me and impose some penance."

"Leave it to me, queen, to impose a penance on this repentant sinner!"
cried John Hey wood, gayly. "Your majesty is much too magnanimous, much
too timid, to treat him as roughly as my brother King Henry deserves.
Leave it to me, then, to punish him; for only the fool is wise enough to
punish the king after his deserts."

Catharine nodded to him with a grateful smile. She comprehended
perfectly John Heywood's delicacy and nice tact; she apprehended that he
wanted by a joke to relieve her from her painful situation, and put an
end to the king's public acknowledgment, which at the same time must
turn to her bitter reproach--bitter, though it were only self-reproach.

"Well," said she, smiling, "what punishment, then, will you impose upon
the king?"

"The punishment of recognizing the fool as his equal!"

"God is my witness that I do so!" cried the king, almost solemnly.
"Fools we are, one and all, and we fall short of the renown which we
have before men."

"But my sentence is not yet complete, brother!" continued John Heywood.
"I furthermore give sentence, that you also forthwith allow me to recite
my poem to you, and that you open your ears in order to hear what John
Heywood, the wise, has indited!"

"You have, then, fulfilled my command, and composed a new interlude?"
cried the king, vivaciously.

"No interlude, but a wholly novel, comical affair--a play full of
lampoons and jokes, at which your eyes are to overflow,