What, I wonder, would be most people's idea of a king?
What was Prince Dolor's?
Perhaps a very splendid personage, with a crown on his head, and a
sceptre in his hand, sitting on a throne, and judging the people.
Always doing right, and never wrong--"The king can do no wrong" was
a law laid down in olden times. Never cross, or tired, or sick, or
suffering; perfectly handsome and well-dressed, calm and good-tempered,
ready to see and hear everybody, and discourteous to nobody; all things
always going well with him, and nothing unpleasant ever happening.
This, probably, was what Prince Dolor expected to see. And what did he
see? But I must tell you how he saw it.
"Ah," said the magpie, "no levée to-day. The King is ill, though his
Majesty does not wish it to be generally known--it would be so very
inconvenient. He can't see you, but perhaps you might like to go and
take a look at him, in a way I often do? It is so very amusing."
Amusing, indeed!
The Prince was just now too much excited to talk much. Was he not going
to see the King his uncle, who had succeeded his father, and dethroned
himself; had stepped into all the pleasant things that he, Prince
Dolor, ought to have had, and shut him up in a desolate tower? What
was he like, this great, bad, clever man? Had he got all the things he
wanted, which another ought to have had? And did he enjoy them?
"Nobody knows," answered the magpie, just as if she had been sitting
inside the Prince's heart, instead of on the top of his shoulder. "He
is a king, and that's enough. For the rest nobody knows."
As she spoke Mag flew down on to the palace roof, where the cloak
had rested, settling down between the great stacks of chimneys as
comfortably as if on the ground. She pecked at the tiles with her
beak--truly she was a wonderful bird--and immediately a little hole
opened, a sort of door, through which could be seen distinctly the
chamber below.
[Illustration: "_She pecked at the tiles with her beak ... a little
hole opened ... 'Now look in, Prince. Make haste, for I must soon shut
it up again.'_" _Page 92._]
"Now look in, my prince. Make haste, for I must soon shut it up again."
But the boy hesitated. "Isn't it rude?--won't they think us--intruding?"
"O dear no! there's a hole like this in every palace; dozens of holes,
indeed. Everybody knows it, but nobody speaks of it. Intrusion! Why,
though the Royal family are supposed to live shut up behind stone
walls ever so thick, all the world knows that they live in a glass
house where everybody can see them, and throw a stone at them. Now, pop
down on your knees, and take a peep at his Majesty."
His Majesty!
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 stray sunbeam, coming through a crevice
of the darkened windows, struck across the carpet, and it was the
loveliest carpet ever woven--just like a bed of flowers to walk over;
only nobody walked over it; the room being perfectly empty and silent.
"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, just
visible under the silken counterpane--quite straight and still--with
its head on the lace pillow--lay a small figure, something like
waxwork, fast asleep--very fast asleep! There were a quantity of
sparkling rings on the tiny yellow hands, that were curled a little,
helplessly, like a baby's, outside the coverlet; the eyes were shut,
the nose looked sharp and thin, and the long grey beard hid the mouth,
and lay over the breast. A sight not ugly, nor frightening, only solemn
and quiet. And so very silent--two little flies buzzing about the
curtains of the bed, being the only audible sound.
"Is that the King?" whispered Prince Dolor.
"Yes," replied the bird.
He had been angry--furiously angry; ever since he knew how his uncle
had taken the crown, and sent him, a poor little helpless child, to be
shut up for life, just as if he had been dead. Many times the boy 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 again.
"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, except that he looked
so peaceful, with all his cares at rest. And this was being dead? So,
even kings died?
"Well, well, he hadn't an easy life, folk say, for all his grandeur.
Perhaps he is glad it is over. Good-bye, your Majesty."
With another cheerful tap of her beak, Mistress Mag shut down the
little door in the tiles, and Prince Dolor's first and last sight of
his uncle was ended.
He sat in the centre of his travelling-cloak silent and thoughtful.
"What shall we do now?" said the Magpie. "There's nothing much
more to be done with his Majesty, except a fine funeral, which I
shall certainly go and see. All the world will. He interested the
world exceedingly when he was alive, and he ought to do it now he's
dead--just once more. And since he can't hear me, I may as well say
that, on the whole, his Majesty is much better dead than alive--if
we can only get somebody in his place. There'll be such a row in the
city presently. Suppose we float up again, and see it all. At a safe
distance, though. It will be such fun."
"What will be fun?"
"A revolution."
Whether anybody except a magpie would have called it "fun," I don't
know, but it certainly was a remarkable scene.
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, stopping at street corners to talk together. The
murmur now and then rose into a shout, and the shout into a roar. When
Prince Dolor, quietly floating in 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 travelled up to the travelling-cloak. And
then began--oh, what a scene!
When you children are grown men and women--or before--you will hear and
read in books about what are called revolutions--earnestly I trust that
neither I nor you may ever see one. But they have happened, and may
happen again, in other countries beside Nomansland, when wicked kings
have helped to make their people wicked too, or out of an unrighteous
nation have sprung rulers equally bad; or, without either of these
causes, when a restless country has fancied any change better than no
change at all.
For me, I don't like changes, unless pretty sure that they are for
good. And how good can come out of absolute evil--the horrible evil
that went on this night under Prince Dolor's very eyes--soldiers
shooting people down by hundreds in the streets, scaffolds erected, and
heads dropping off--houses burnt, and women and children murdered--this
is more than I can understand.
But all these things you will find in history, my children, and must
by-and-by judge for yourselves the right and wrong of them, as far as
anybody ever can judge.
Prince Dolor saw it all. Things happened so fast after one another that
they quite confused his faculties.
"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 seemed home,
and its dreariness and silence absolute paradise after all this.
"Good-bye, then," said the magpie, flapping her wings. She had been
chatting incessantly all day and all night, for it was actually thus
long that Prince Dolor had been hovering over the city, neither eating
nor sleeping, with all these terrible things happening under his very
eyes. "You've had enough, I suppose, of seeing the world?"
"Oh, I have--I have!" cried the Prince with a shudder.
"That is, till next time. All right, your Royal Highness. You don't
know me, but I know you. We may meet again sometime."
She looked at him with her clear piercing eyes, sharp enough to see
through everything, and it seemed as if they changed from bird's eyes
to human eyes, the very eyes of his godmother, whom he had not seen for
ever so long. But the minute afterwards she became only a bird, and
with a screech and a chatter spread her wings and flew away.
Prince Dolor fell into a kind of swoon, of utter misery, bewilderment,
and exhaustion, and when he awoke he found himself in his own
room--alone and quiet--with the dawn just breaking, and the long rim of
yellow light in the horizon glimmering through the window panes.