here was no other person in the world. There
was that that fenced him from all living. Our Saviour Christ upon the
rood spoke to His Blessed Mother before His dereliction, but not again
afterwards. There was no more that He might say to her, or to His
cousin, John.

This, then, was the state in which Master Richard lay--that
_specialissimus_ of God Almighty, to whom the Divine Love and Majesty
was as breath to his nostrils, meat to his mouth, and water to his body.
I an say no more on that point.

As to the fault by which it seemed that he had come to that state, it
was the most terrible of all sins, which is Presumption. Holy Church
sets before us Humility as the chief of virtues, to shew us that
Presumption is the chief of vices. A man may be an adulterer or a
murderer or a sacrilegious person, and yet by Humility may find mercy.
But a man may be chaste and stainless in all his works, and a worshipper
of God, but without Humility he cannot come to glory. [Sir John proceeds
in this strain for several pages, illustrating his point by the cases of
Lucifer, Nabuchodonosor, Judas Iscariot, King Herod, and others.]....

Now the matter in which it seemed to Master Richard that he had sinned
the sin of Presumption was the old matter of the tidings he had borne to
the King. It was not that the tidings were false, for he knew them for
true; but yet that he had been presumptuous in bearing them. It was as
though a stander-by had overheard tidings given by a king to his
servant, and had presumed to hear them himself, as it were Achimaas the
son of Sadoc. [I supposed that this obscure reference is to 2 Kings
xviii. 19.] And more than that, that he had presumed in thinking that he
could be such a man as our Lord would call to such an office. He had set
himself, it appeared, far above his fellows in even listening to our
Saviour's voice; he should rather have cried with saint Peter, _Exi a me
quia homo peccator sum Domine_. ["Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,
O Lord" (Luke v. 8.)]

It was this sin that had driven him from God's Presence. Our Lord had
bestowed on him wonderful gifts of grace. He had visited him as He
visits few others and had led him in the Way of Union, and he had
followed, triumphing in this, giving God the glory in words only, until
he had fallen as it seemed from the height of presumption to the depth
of despair, and lay here now, excluded from the Majesty that he desired.

* * *