After this journey which had given the Prince so much pain, his desire
to see the world had somehow faded away. He contented himself with
reading his books, and looking out of the tower windows, and listening
to his beloved little lark, which had come home with him that day, and
had never left him again.
True, it kept out of the way; but though his nurse sometimes faintly
heard it, and said, "What is that horrid noise outside?" she never got
the faintest chance to make the lark into a pie.
All during the winter the little bird cheered and amused him. He
scarcely needed anything more--not even his traveling cloak, which lay
bundled unnoticed in a corner, tied up in its many knots.
Prince Dolor was now a big boy. Not tall--alas! he never could be that,
with his poor little shrunken legs. But he was stout and strong, with
great sturdy shoulders, and muscular arms, upon which he could swing
himself about almost as well as a monkey. His face, too, was very
handsome; thinner, firmer, more manly; but still the sweet face of his
childhood--his mother's own face.
The boy was not a stupid boy either. He could learn almost anything he
chose--and he did choose, which was more than half the battle. He never
gave up his lessons until he had learned them all--never thought it a
punishment that he had to work at them, and that they cost him a deal of
trouble sometimes.
"But," thought he, "men work, and it must be so grand to be a man;--a
prince too; and I fancy princes work harder than anybody--except kings.
The princes I read about generally turn into kings. I wonder"--the boy
was always wondering--"Nurse"--and one day he startled her with a sudden
question--"tell me--shall I ever be a king?"
The woman stood, perplexed beyond expression. So long a time had passed
by since her crime--if it were a crime--and her sentence, that she now
seldom thought of either. She had even grown used to her punishment. And
the little prince whom she at first hated, she had learned to love--at
least, enough to feel sorry for him.
The Prince noticed that her feeling toward him was changing and did not
shrink from her.
"Nurse--dear nurse," said he, one day, "I don't mean to vex you, but
tell me--what is a king? Shall I ever be one?"
Then the idea came to her--what harm would it be, even if he did know
his own history? Perhaps he ought to know it--for there had been many
changes in Nomansland, as in most other countries. Something might
happen--who could tell? Possibly a crown would yet be set upon those
pretty, fair curls--which she began to think prettier than ever when she
saw the imaginary crown upon them.
She sat down, considering whether her oath, "never to say a word to
Prince Dolor about himself," would be broken, if she were to take a
pencil and write, what was to be told. It was a miserable deception. But
then, she was an unhappy woman, more to be pitied than scorned.
After long doubt, she put her finger to her lips, and taking the
Prince's slate--with a sponge tied to it, ready to rub out the writing
in a minute--she wrote:
"You are a king."
Prince Dolor started. His face grew pale and then flushed all over; his
eyes glistened; he held himself erect. Lame as he was, anybody could see
he was born to be a king.
"Hush!" said the nurse, as he was beginning to speak. And then,
terribly frightened all the while, she wrote down in a few sentences,
his history. How his parents had died, how his uncle had stolen the
throne, and sent him to end his days in this lonely tower.
"I, too," added she, bursting into tears. "Unless, indeed, you could get
out into the world, and fight for your rights like a man. And fight for
me also, My Prince, that I may not die in this desolate place."
"Poor old nurse," said the boy tenderly. For somehow, boy as he was,
when he heard he was born to be a king, he felt like a man--like a
king--who could afford to be tender because he was strong.
He scarcely slept that night, and barely listened to the singing of the
lark. Things more important were in his mind.
"Suppose," thought he, "I were to go into the world, no matter how it
hurts me. The people might only laugh at me, but still I might show them
I could do something. At any rate, I might go and see if there was
anything for me to do. Godmother, help me!"
It was so long since he had asked for help, that he was hardly surprised
when he got no answer. He sprang out of bed, dressed himself, and leaped
to the corner where lay his traveling-cloak and unrolled it.
Then he jumped into the middle of it, said his charm, and was out
through the skylight immediately.
"Good-bye, pretty lark!" he shouted, as he passed it on the wing. "You
have been my pleasure, now I must go and work. Sing to old nurse until I
come back again. Good-bye!"
But as the cloak hung motionless in air, he suddenly remembered that he
had not made up his mind where to go--indeed, he did not know, and there
was nobody to tell him.
"Godmother," he cried, "you know what I want. Tell me where I ought to
go; show me whatever I ought to see--never mind what I like."
This journey was not for pleasure as before. He was not a baby now, to
do nothing but play. Men work, this much Prince Dolor knew. As the cloak
started off, over freezing mountain tops, and desolate forests, smiling
plains and great lakes, he was often rather frightened. But he crouched
down, and wrapping himself up in his bearskin waited for what was to
happen.
After some time he heard a murmur in the distance, and stretching his
chin over the edge of the cloak, Prince Dolor saw--far, far below him,
yet with his gold spectacles and silver ears on he could distinctly hear
and see--a great city!
Suppose you were to see a large city from the upper air; where, with
your ears and eyes open, you could take in everything at once. What
would it look like? How would you feel about it? I hardly know myself.
Do you?
Prince Dolor was as bewildered as a blind person who is suddenly made to
see.
He gazed down on the city below him, and then put his hand over his
eyes.
"I can't bear to look at it, it is so beautiful--so dreadful. And I
don't understand it--not one bit. I wish I had some one to tell me about
it."
"Do you? Then pray speak to me."
The voice that squeaked out this reply came from a great black and white
bird that flew into the cloak and began walking round and round on the
edge of it with a dignified stride.
"I haven't the honor of your acquaintance," said the boy politely.
"My name is Mag and I shall be happy to tell you everything you want to
know. My family is very old; we have builded in this palace for many
years. I am well acquainted with the King, the Queen, and the little
princes and princesses--also the maids of honor, and all the
inhabitants of the city. I talk a great deal, but I always talk sense,
and I dare say I shall be very useful to a poor, little, ignorant boy
like you."
"I am a prince," said the other gently.
"All right. And I am a magpie."
She settled herself at his elbow and began to chatter away, pointing out
with one skinny claw every object of interest, evidently believing, as
no doubt all its inhabitants did, that there was no city in the world
like the great capital of Nomansland.
Mag said that it was the finest city in the world but there were a few
things in it that surprised Prince Dolor. One half the people seemed so
happy and contented and the other half were so poor and miserable. "I
would try to make it a little more equal if I were king," he said.
"But you're not the king," returned the magpie loftily. "Shall I show
you the royal palace?"
It was a magnificent palace covering many acres of ground. It had
terraces and gardens; battlements and towers. But since the Queen died
the windows through which she looked at the Beautiful Mountains, had
been closed and boarded up. The room was so little that no one cared to
use it.
"I should like to see the King," said Prince Dolor, and as he spoke Mag
flew down to the palace roof, where the cloak rested, settling down
between the great stocks of chimneys as comfortably as if on the ground.
Mag pecked at the tiles with her beak and immediately a little hole
opened, a sort of door, through which could be seen distinctly the
chamber below.
"Now pop down on your knees and take a peep at his Majesty."
[Illustration: HE LIFTED UP HIS THIN, SLENDER HAND, AND THERE CAME A
SILENCE OVER THE VAST CROWD IMMEDIATELY. [PAGE 47.]]
The Prince gazed eagerly down, into a large room, the largest room he
had ever beheld, with furniture and hangings grander than anything he
could have ever imagined. A sunbeam struck across the carpet and it
looked like a bed of flowers.
"Where is the King?" asked the puzzled boy.
"There," said Mag, pointing with one wrinkled claw to a magnificent bed,
large enough to contain six people. In the centre of it quite straight
and still with its head on the lace pillow lay a small figure, something
like waxwork, fast asleep. There were a number of sparkling rings on the
tiny yellow hands; the eyes were shut, and the nose looked sharp and
thin, and the long grey beard hid the mouth, and lay over the breast.
Two little flies buzzing about the curtains of the bed was the only
audible sound.
"Is that the King?" whispered Prince Dolor.
"Yes," replied the bird.
He had been angry ever since he learned how his uncle had taken the
crown and had felt as if, king as he was, he should like to strike him,
this great, strong wicked man.
Why, you might as well have struck a baby! How helpless he lay! with his
eyes shut, and his idle hands folded; they had no more work to do, bad
or good.
"What is the matter with him?" asked the Prince.
"He is dead," said the magpie with a croak.
No, there was not the least use in being angry with him now. On the
contrary, the Prince felt almost sorry for him.
"What shall we do now?" asked the magpie. "There's nothing much more to
be done with his Majesty, except a funeral. Suppose we float up again at
a safe distance and see it all. It will be such fun. There will be a
great row in the city and I wonder who we shall have in his place?"
"What will be fun?"
"A Revolution."
As soon as the Cathedral bell began to toll, and the minute guns to
fire, announcing to the Kingdom that it was without a king, the people
gathered in crowds. The murmur now and then rose into a shout, and the
shout into a roar. When Prince Dolor, quietly floating in the upper air,
caught the sound of their different and opposite cries, it seemed to him
as if the whole city had gone mad together.
"Long live the King!" "The King is dead--down with the King!" "Down with
the crown and the King too!" "Hurrah for the Republic!" "Hurrah for no
government at all."
Such were the shouts which came up to him and then began, oh! what a
scene! The country was in a revolution. Soldiers were shooting down
people by hundreds in the streets, scaffolds were being erected, heads
dropping off, houses burned, and women and children murdered.
Prince Dolor saw it all. Things happened so fast after one another that
he nearly lost his senses.
"Oh, let me go home," he cried at last, stopping his ears and shutting
his eyes, "only let me go home!" for even his lonely tower and its
dreariness and silence, was absolute paradise after this.
Prince Dolor fell into a kind of swoon and when he awoke he found
himself in his own room.