I watched the prisoners unceremoniously dismounted and huddled together against the coming of the Duke.

There was but one man among them who stood erect.

The torch-light played on his face, which was sometimes bent down to a little child in his arms, so that I saw him well.

He looked not at all upon the rude men-at-arms who pushed and bullied about him, but continued tenderly to hush his charge, as if he had been a nurse in a babe-chamber under the leads, with silence in all the house below.
It pleased me to see the man, for all my life I had loved children.

And yet at ten years of age I had never so much as touched one--no, nor spoken even, only looked down on those that hated me and spat on the very tower wherein I dwelt.