HAROLD. Never!
WULFNOTH. Yea, but thou must not this way answer _him_.
HAROLD. Is it not better still to speak the truth?
WULFNOTH. Not here, or thou wilt never hence nor I:
For in the racing toward this golden goal
He turns not right or left, but tramples flat
Whatever thwarts him; hast thou never heard
His savagery at Alencon,--the town
Hung out raw hides along their walls, and cried
'Work for the tanner.'
HAROLD. That had anger'd _me_
Had I been William.
WULFNOTH. Nay, but he had prisoners,
He tore their eyes out, sliced their hands away,
And flung them streaming o'er the battlements
Upon the heads of those who walk'd within--
O speak him fair, Harold, for thine own sake.
HAROLD. Your Welshman says, 'The Truth against the World,'
Much more the truth against myself.
WULFNOTH. Thyself?
But for my sake, oh brother! oh! for my sake!
HAROLD. Poor Wulfnoth! do they not entreat thee well?
WULFNOTH. I see the blackness of my dungeon loom
Across their lamps of revel, and beyond
The merriest murmurs of their banquet clank
The shackles that will bind me to the wall.
HAROLD. Too fearful still!
WULFNOTH. Oh no, no--speak him fair!
Call it to temporize; and not to lie;
Harold, I do not counsel thee to lie.
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