They burn in indignation. I repent.
King John
They burn in indignation. I repent.
There is no sure foundation set on blood,
No certain life achieved by others' death.
Enter Messenger.
A fearful eye thou hast. Where is that blood
That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?
So foul a sky clears not without a storm.
Pour down thy weather: how goes all in France?
Messenger
From France to England. Never such a power
For any foreign preparation
Was levied in the body of a land.
The copy of your speed is learned by them,
For when you should be told they do prepare,
The tidings comes that they are all arrived.
King John
O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?
Where hath it slept? Where is my mother's care,
That such an army could be drawn in France
And she not hear of it?
Messenger
My liege, her ear
Is stopped with dust. The first of April died
Your noble mother. And as I hear, my lord,
The Lady Constance in a frenzy died
Three days before. But this from rumor's tongue
I idly heard. If true or false, I know not.
King John, aside
Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!
O, make a league with me till I have pleased
My discontented peers. What? Mother dead?
How wildly then walks my estate in France!—
Under whose conduct came those powers of France
That thou for truth giv'st out are landed here?
Messenger
Under the Dauphin.
King John
Thou hast made me giddy
With these ill tidings.