"Not, I'd have you remember--not that 'twas blood I did foresee.... To
kill in blood a man, and he a king, so near to natural death ...
foul, foul!"
"And Macbeth?" I said presently--"Macbeth...?"
He laid down his viol with prolonged care.
"His was a soul, sir, nobler than his fate. I followed him not without
love from boyhood--a youth almost too fine of spirit; shrinking
from all violence, over-nicely; eloquent, yet chary of speech,
and of a dark profundity of thought. The questions he would
patter!--unanswerable, searching earth and heaven through.... And who
now was it told me the traitor Judas's hair was red?--yet not red his,
but of a reddish chestnut, fine and bushy. Children have played their
harmless hands at hide-and-seek therein. O sea of many winds!
"For come gloom on the hills, floods, discolouring mist; breathe but
some grandam's tale of darkness and blood and doubleness in his
hearing: all changed. Flame kindled; a fevered unrest drove him out;
and Ambition, that spotted hound of hell, strained at the leash
towards the Pit.
"So runs the world--the ardent and the lofty.
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