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CHAPTER 22
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.
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