The Prince and the Pauper eBook

“I am content, my lord.  So thou offend not again, here or in the ears of others, it shall be as though thou hadst not spoken.  But thou need’st not have misgivings.  He is my sister’s son; are not his voice, his face, his form, familiar to me from his cradle?  Madness can do all the odd conflicting things thou seest in him, and more.  Dost not recall how that the old Baron Marley, being mad, forgot the favour of his own countenance that he had known for sixty years, and held it was another’s; nay, even claimed he was the son of Mary Magdalene, and that his head was made of Spanish glass; and, sooth to say, he suffered none to touch it, lest by mischance some heedless hand might shiver it?  Give thy misgivings easement, good my lord.  This is the very prince—­I know him well—­and soon will be thy king; it may advantage thee to bear this in mind, and more dwell upon it than the other.”

After some further talk, in which the Lord St. John covered up his mistake as well as he could by repeated protests that his faith was thoroughly grounded now, and could not be assailed by doubts again, the Lord Hertford relieved his fellow-keeper, and sat down to keep watch and ward alone.  He was soon deep in meditation, and evidently the longer he thought, the more he was bothered.  By-and-by he began to pace the floor and mutter.

“Tush, he must be the prince!  Will any he in all the land maintain there can be two, not of one blood and birth, so marvellously twinned?  And even were it so, ’twere yet a stranger miracle that chance should cast the one into the other’s place.  Nay, ’tis folly, folly, folly!”

Presently he said—­

“Now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you that would be natural; that would be reasonable.  But lived ever an impostor yet, who, being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by all, denied his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation?  No!  By the soul of St. Swithin, no!  This is the true prince, gone mad!”

Chapter VII.  Tom’s first royal dinner.

Somewhat after one in the afternoon, Tom resignedly underwent the ordeal of being dressed for dinner.  He found himself as finely clothed as before, but everything different, everything changed, from his ruff to his stockings.  He was presently conducted with much state to a spacious and ornate apartment, where a table was already set for one.  Its furniture was all of massy gold, and beautified with designs which well-nigh made it priceless, since they were the work of Benvenuto.  The room was half-filled with noble servitors.  A chaplain said grace, and Tom was about to fall to, for hunger had long been constitutional with him, but was interrupted by my lord the Earl of Berkeley, who fastened a napkin about his neck; for the great post of Diaperers to the Prince of Wales was hereditary in this nobleman’s