The Lord Chamberlain
At noon the lord chamberlain appeared. With a long, low bow, and paper
in hand, he stepped softly into the room. Greeting His Majesty with
every appearance of the profoundest respect, and congratulating him on
the evident progress he had made, he declared himself sorry to trouble
him, but there were certain papers, he said, which required his
signature--and therewith drew nearer to the king, who lay looking at
him doubtfully. He was a lean, long, yellow man, with a small head,
bald over the top, and tufted at the back and about the ears. He had a
very thin, prominent, hooked nose, and a quantity of loose skin under
his chin and about the throat, which came craning up out of his
neckcloth. His eyes were very small, sharp, and glittering, and looked
black as jet. He had hardly enough of a mouth to make a smile with.
His left hand held the paper, and the long, skinny fingers of his right
a pen just dipped in ink.
But the king, who for weeks had scarcely known what he did, was today
so much himself as to be aware that he was not quite himself; and the
moment he saw the paper, he resolved that he would not sign without
understanding and approving of it. He requested the lord chamberlain
therefore to read it. His Lordship commenced at once but the
difficulties he seemed to encounter, and the fits of stammering that
seized him, roused the king's suspicion tenfold. He called the princess.
'I trouble His Lordship too much,' he said to her: 'you can read print
well, my child--let me hear how you can read writing. Take that paper
from His Lordship's hand, and read it to me from beginning to end,
while my lord drinks a glass of my favourite wine, and watches for your
blunders.'
'Pardon me, Your Majesty,' said the lord chamberlain, with as much of a
smile as he was able to extemporize, 'but it were a thousand pities to
put the attainments of Her Royal Highness to a test altogether too
severe. Your Majesty can scarcely with justice expect the very organs
of her speech to prove capable of compassing words so long, and to her
so unintelligible.'
'I think much of my little princess and her capabilities,' returned the
king, more and more aroused. 'Pray, my lord, permit her to try.'
'Consider, Your Majesty: the thing would be altogether without
precedent. It would be to make sport of statecraft,' said the lord
chamberlain.
'Perhaps you are right, my lord,' answered the king, with more meaning
than he intended should be manifest, while to his growing joy he felt
new life and power throbbing in heart and brain. 'So this morning we
shall read no further. I am indeed ill able for business of such
weight.'
'Will Your Majesty please sign your royal name here?' said the lord
chamberlain, preferring the request as a matter of course, and
approaching with the feather end of the pen pointed to a spot where
there was a great red seal.
'Not today, my lord,' replied the king.
'It is of the greatest importance, Your Majesty,' softly insisted the
other.
'I descried no such importance in it,' said the king.
'Your Majesty heard but a part.'
'And I can hear no more today.'
'I trust Your Majesty has ground enough, in a case of necessity like
the present, to sign upon the representation of his loyal subject and
chamberlain? Or shall I call the lord chancellor?' he added, rising.
'There is no need. I have the very highest opinion of your judgement,
my lord,' answered the king; 'that is, with respect to means: we might
differ as to ends.'
The lord chamberlain made yet further attempts at persuasion; but they
grew feebler and feebler, and he was at last compelled to retire
without having gained his object. And well might his annoyance be
keen! For that paper was the king's will, drawn up by the
attorney-general; nor until they had the king's signature to it was
there much use in venturing farther. But his worst sense of
discomfiture arose from finding the king with so much capacity left,
for the doctor had pledged himself so to weaken his brain that he
should be as a child in their hands, incapable of refusing anything
requested of him: His Lordship began to doubt the doctor's fidelity to
the conspiracy.
The princess was in high delight. She had not for weeks heard so many
words, not to say words of such strength and reason, from her father's
lips: day by day he had been growing weaker and more lethargic. He was
so much exhausted, however, after this effort, that he asked for
another piece of bread and more wine, and fell fast asleep the moment
he had taken them.
The lord chamberlain sent in a rage for Dr Kelman. He came, and while
professing himself unable to understand the symptoms described by His
Lordship, yet pledged himself again that on the morrow the king should
do whatever was required of him.
The day went on. When His Majesty was awake, the princess read to
him--one storybook after another; and whatever she read, the king
listened as if he had never heard anything so good before, making out
in it the wisest meanings. Every now and then he asked for a piece of
bread and a little wine, and every time he ate and drank he slept, and
every time he woke he seemed better than the last time. The princess
bearing her part, the loaf was eaten up and the flagon emptied before
night. The butler took the flagon away, and brought it back filled to
the brim, but both were thirsty and hungry when Curdie came again.
Meantime he and Lina, watching and waking alternately, had plenty of
sleep. In the afternoon, peeping from the recess, they saw several of
the servants enter hurriedly, one after the other, draw wine, drink it,
and steal out; but their business was to take care of the king, not of
his cellar, and they let them drink. Also, when the butler came to
fill the flagon, they restrained themselves, for the villain's fate was
not yet ready for him. He looked terribly frightened, and had brought
with him a large candle and a small terrier--which latter indeed
threatened to be troublesome, for he went roving and sniffing about
until he came to the recess where they were. But as soon as he showed
himself, Lina opened her jaws so wide, and glared at him so horribly,
that, without even uttering a whimper, he tucked his tail between his
legs and ran to his master. He was drawing the wicked wine at the
moment, and did not see him, else he would doubtless have run too.
When suppertime approached, Curdie took his place at the door into the
servants' hall; but after a long hour's vain watch, he began to fear he
should get nothing: there was so much idling about, as well as coming
and going. It was hard to bear--chiefly from the attractions of a
splendid loaf, just fresh out of the oven, which he longed to secure
for the king and princess. At length his chance did arrive: he pounced
upon the loaf and carried it away, and soon after got hold of a pie.
This time, however, both loaf and pie were missed. The cook was
called. He declared he had provided both. One of themselves, he said,
must have carried them away for some friend outside the palace. Then a
housemaid, who had not long been one of them, said she had seen someone
like a page running in the direction of the cellar with something in
his hands. Instantly all turned upon the pages, accusing them, one
after another. All denied, but nobody believed one of them: Where
there is no truth there can be no faith.
To the cellar they all set out to look for the missing pie and loaf.
Lina heard them coming, as well she might, for they were talking and
quarrelling loud, and gave her master warning. They snatched up
everything, and got all signs of their presence out at the back door
before the servants entered. When they found nothing, they all turned
on the chambermaid, and accused her, not only of lying against the
pages, but of having taken the things herself. Their language and
behaviour so disgusted Curdie, who could hear a great part of what
passed, and he saw the danger of discovery now so much increased, that
he began to devise how best at once to rid the palace of the whole pack
of them. That, however, would be small gain so long as the treacherous
officers of state continued in it. They must be first dealt with. A
thought came to him, and the longer he looked at it the better he liked
it.
As soon as the servants were gone, quarrelling and accusing all the
way, they returned and finished their supper. Then Curdie, who had
long been satisfied that Lina understood almost every word he said,
communicated his plan to her, and knew by the wagging of her tail and
the flashing of her eyes that she comprehended it. Until they had the
king safe through the worst part of the night, however, nothing could
be done.
They had now merely to go on waiting where they were till the household
should be asleep. This waiting and waiting was much the hardest thing
Curdie had to do in the whole affair. He took his mattock and, going
again into the long passage, lighted a candle end and proceeded to
examine the rock on all sides. But this was not merely to pass the
time: he had a reason for it. When he broke the stone in the street,
over which the baker fell, its appearance led him to pocket a fragment
for further examination; and since then he had satisfied himself that
it was the kind of stone in which gold is found, and that the yellow
particles in it were pure metal. If such stone existed here in any
plenty, he could soon make the king rich and independent of his
ill-conditioned subjects. He was therefore now bent on an examination
of the rock; nor had he been at it long before he was persuaded that
there were large quantities of gold in the half-crystalline white
stone, with its veins of opaque white and of green, of which the rock,
so far as he had been able to inspect it, seemed almost entirely to
consist. Every piece he broke was spotted with particles and little
lumps of a lovely greenish yellow--and that was gold. Hitherto he had
worked only in silver, but he had read, and heard talk, and knew,
therefore, about gold. As soon as he had got the king free of rogues
and villains, he would have all the best and most honest miners, with
his father at the head of them, to work this rock for the king.
It was a great delight to him to use his mattock once more. The time
went quickly, and when he left the passage to go to the king's chamber,
he had already a good heap of fragments behind the broken door.