Part 20 (1/2)

Constable. Yes, and it is my conviction that the peasant has played out his part--the part of a crude force needed to drive away the enemy by sheer strength of arm. Crush the Church, Your Highness, for it is keeping the people in fetters. Seize the gold of the Church and pay the country's debt--and give back to the reduced n.o.bility what the Church has obtained from it by dupery.

Gustaf. Call in Brask.

Constable. Your Highness!

Gustaf. Call Bishop Brask! [Exit the Constable.]

[Enter Bishop Brask.]

Gustaf. Speak, Your Grace!

Brask. I wish to offer our congratulations on--

Gustaf. I thank Your Grace! And what more?

Brask. There have been complaints from several districts, I am sorry to say, about unpaid loans of silver exacted from the churches by Your Highness.

Gustaf. Which you now are trying to recover. Are all the chalices actually needed for communion?

Brask. They are.

Gustaf Let them use pewter mugs, then.

Brask. Your Highness!

Gustaf. Anything more?

Brask. What is worse than anything else--all this heresy!

Gustaf. No concern of mine! I am not the Pope.

Brask. I have to warn Your Highness that the Church must look out for her own rights, even if doing so should bring her into conflict--

Gustaf. With whom?

Brask. With the State.

Gustaf. Your Church can go to the devil! There, I have said it!

Brask. I knew it.

Gustaf. And you were only waiting for me to say so?

Brask. Exactly.

Gustaf. Take care! You travel with a following of two hundred men, and you eat from silver, when the people are living on bark.

Brask. Your Highness takes too narrow a view of the matter.

Gustaf. Have you heard of Luther? You are a well-informed man. What kind of a phenomenon is he? What have you to say of the movements that are now spreading throughout Europe?