"Oh, you are a very knowing child!" cried the king, with an inhuman,
ironical laugh. "You know my most secret thoughts and my most hidden
feelings. Without doubt you are a good papist, since the death of
the popish countess fills you with such heart-rending grief. Then
you must confess, at the least, that it is right to burn the four
heretics!"

"Heretics!" exclaimed Anne, enthusiastically, "call you heretics
those noble men who go gladly and boldly to death for their
convictions and their faith? King Henry! King Henry! Woe to you if
these men are condemned as heretics! They alone are the faithful,
they are the true servants of God. They have freed themselves from
human supremacy, and as you would not recognize the pope, so they
will not recognize you as head of the Church! God alone, they say,
is Lord of the Church and Master of their consciences, and who can
be presumptuous enough to call them criminals?"

"I!" exclaimed Henry the Eighth, in a powerful tone. "I dare do it.
I say that they are heretics, and that I will destroy them, will
tread them all beneath my feet, all of them, all who think as they
do! I say that I will shed the blood of these criminals, and prepare
for them torments at which human nature will shudder and quake. God
will manifest Himself by me in fire and blood! He has put the sword
into my hand, and I will wield it for His glory. Like St. George, I
will tread the dragon of heresy beneath my feet!"

And haughtily raising his crimsoned face and rolling his great
bloodshot eyes wildly around the circle, he continued: "Hear this
all of you who are here assembled; no mercy for heretics, no pardon