While there is no royal road to cleverness, the real road, such as it is,
frequently is traveled by royal feet. In these days the functions of
royalty are not of a nature that is likely to develop merry dispositions.
Rich in sly humor was the reply of Henry IV of France, who one day reached
Amiens after a prolonged journey. A local orator was deputed to harangue
him, and commenced with a lengthy string of epithets:
"Very great sovereign, very good, very merciful, very magnanimous----"
"Add also," interrupted the weary monarch, "very tired."
The same king, who appears to have been a constant sufferer from the
stupid orations of these wordy windbags, was listening to a speech in a
small country town, when an ass brayed at a distance.
"Pardon me, gentlemen," said the witty sovereign; "one at a time, please."
Henry's minister, Sully, was a Protestant, and happening to hear that a
famous physician had quitted Calvinism for Catholicism, the king said to
him:
"My friend, your religion is in a bad way--the doctors give it up."
George III was the author of many clever sayings. Meeting Lord Kenyon at a
levee soon after that eminent justice had been guilty of an extraordinary
explosion of ill humor in the Court of King's Bench, the king remarked to
him:
"My lord chief justice, I hear that you have lost your temper, and from my
great regard for you I am glad to hear it, for I hope you will find a
better one."
On another occasion, when coming out of the House of Lords after opening
the session, he said to the lord chancellor:
"Did I deliver the speech well?"
"Very well indeed," was the reply.
"I am glad of that," said the king, "for there was nothing in it."
When Royalty Had Worst of It.
The laugh, however, has not always been upon the side of royalty. When the
Prince-Bishop of Liege was riding to battle at the head of a fine body of
troops he was asked by a spectator how he, a minister of religion, could
engage in the iniquities of war.
"I wage war," said the prelate, "in my character of prince, not of
archbishop."
"And pray," continued the interrogator, "when the devil carries off the
prince, what will become of the archbishop?"
Decidedly the worst of the exchanges did an Eastern sovereign receive
when, having bought several horses from some merchants, he gave them a lac
of rupees to purchase more for him. Soon after they had departed, he, in a
sportive humor, ordered his vizier to make out a list of all the fools in
his dominions. The vizier did so, and put his majesty's name at the head
of them. The king asked why. The vizier replied:
"Because you entrusted a lac of rupees to men you didn't know, and who
will never come back."
"Aye, but suppose they should come back?"
"Then," said the vizier, "I shall erase your name and insert theirs."
In the answer which a German prince was given there seems to be a rebuke
for his misgovernment implied. Having in a dream seen three rats, one fat,
the other lean, and the third blind, he sent for a celebrated Bohemian
gipsy and demanded an explanation.
"The fat rat," said she, "is your prime minister, the lean rat your
people, and the blind rat yourself."
Court Laureate Too Frank.
One of the Shahs of Persia was more anxious than able to acquire fame as a
poet. He had just completed a new performance in very "peculiar meter,"
and summoned the court poet into the royal presence to hear the poem read.
The laureate, when his opinion was asked (in theatrical language),
"damned" the composition.
The Shah, enraged at this uncourtly criticism, gave orders that the court
poet should be taken to the stable and tied up in the same stall with a
donkey. Here the poor sinner remained until his royal rival had
perpetrated another poem, when he was again commanded to appear before the
throne and submit to a second infliction of sovereign dulness.
He listened in silence while the new poem was read, and at the conclusion,
his opinion being required, he fell upon his knees and significantly
exclaimed to the royal author:
"Send me back to the donkey!"
The Nation's Debt to Mothers.