C. Wal monologue (Act 2) — The Saint's Tragedy

Hear me out, and you'll burn him. His sermon was like a hailstorm, the tail of the shower the sharpest. Idleness? he asked next of us all: how will they work, when they see you landlords sitting idle above them, in a fool's paradise of luxury and riot, never looking down but to squeeze from them an extra drop of honey-- like sheep-boys stuffing themselves with blackberries while the sheep are licking up flukes in every ditch? And now you wish to leave the poor man in the slough, whither your neglect and your example have betrayed him, and made his too apt scholarship the excuse for your own remorseless greed! As a Christian, I am ashamed of you all; as a Churchman, doubly ashamed of those prelates, hired stalking-horses of the rich, who would fain gloss over their own sloth and cowardice with the wisdom which cometh not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish; aping the artless cant of an aristocracy who made them--use them--and despise them. That was his sermon.