Bruno smiled at the Professor. “I doos enjoy it,” he said.
The Other Professor caught the word. “And I hope you’re enjoying yourself, little Man?” he enquired.
Bruno’s look of horror quite startled him. “No, indeed I aren’t!” he said.
The Other Professor looked thoroughly puzzled. “Well, well!” he said. “Try some cowslip wine!” And he filled a glass and handed it to Bruno. “Drink this, my dear, and you’ll be quite another man!”
“Who shall I be?” said Bruno, pausing in the act of putting it to his lips.
“Don’t ask so many questions!” Sylvie interposed, anxious to save the poor old man from further bewilderment. “Suppose we get the Professor to tell us a story.”
Bruno adopted the idea with enthusiasm. “Please do!” he cried eagerly. “Sumfin about tigers—and bumblebees—and robin-redbreasts, oo knows!”
“Why should you always have live things in stories?” said the Professor. “Why don’t you have events, or circumstances?”
“Oh, please invent a story like that!” cried Bruno.
The Professor began fluently enough. “Once a coincidence was taking a walk with a little accident, and they met an explanation—a very old explanation—so old that it was quite doubled up, and looked more like a conundrum—” he broke off suddenly.
“Please go on!” both children exclaimed.
The Professor made a candid confession. “It’s a very difficult sort to invent, I find. Suppose Bruno tells one, first.”
Bruno was only too happy to adopt the suggestion.
“Once there were a Pig, and a Accordion, and two Jars of Orange-marmalade—”
“The dramatis personae,” murmured the Professor. “Well, what then?”
“So, when the Pig played on the Accordion,” Bruno went on, “one of the Jars of Orange-marmalade didn’t like the tune, and the other Jar of Orange-marmalade did like the tune—I know I shall get confused among those Jars of Orange-marmalade, Sylvie!” he whispered anxiously.
“I will now recite the other Introductory Verses,” said the Other Professor.
Little Birds are choking
Baronets with bun,
Taught to fire a gun:
Taught, I say, to splinter
Salmon in the winter—
Merely for the fun.Little Birds are hiding
Crimes in carpetbags,
Blessed by happy stags:
Blessed, I say, though beaten—
Since our friends are eaten
When the memory flags.Little Birds are tasting
Gratitude and gold,
Pale with sudden cold
Pale, I say, and wrinkled—
When the bells have tinkled
And the Tale is told.
“The next thing to be done,” the Professor cheerfully remarked to the Lord Chancellor, as soon as the applause, caused by the recital of the Pig-Tale, had come to an end, “is to drink the Emperor’s health, is it not?”
“Undoubtedly!” the Lord Chancellor replied with much solemnity, as he rose to his feet to give the necessary directions for the ceremony. “Fill your glasses!” he thundered. All did so, instantly. “Drink the Emperor’s health!” A general gurgling resounded all through the Hall. “Three cheers for the Emperor!” The faintest possible sound followed this announcement: and the Chancellor, with admirable presence of mind, instantly proclaimed “A speech from the Emperor!”
The Emperor had begun his speech almost before the words were uttered. “However unwilling to be Emperor—since you all wish me to be Emperor—you know how badly the late Warden managed things—with such enthusiasm as you have shown—he persecuted you—he taxed you too heavily—you know who is fittest man to be Emperor—my brother had no sense—.”
How long this curious speech might have lasted it is impossible to say, for just at this moment a hurricane shook the palace to its foundations, bursting open the windows, extinguishing some of the lamps, and filling the air with clouds of dust, which took strange shapes in the air, and seemed to form words.
But the storm subsided as suddenly as it had risen—the casements swung into their places again: the dust vanished: all was as it had been a minute ago—with the exception of the Emperor and Empress, over whom had come a wondrous change. The vacant stare, the meaningless smile, had passed away: all could see that these two strange beings had returned to their senses.
The Emperor continued his speech as if there had been no interruption. “And we have behaved—my wife and I—like two arrant Knaves. We deserve no better name. When my brother went away, you lost the best Warden you ever had. And I’ve been doing my best, wretched hypocrite that I am, to cheat you into making me an Emperor. Me! One that has hardly got the wits to be a shoeblack!”
The Lord Chancellor wrung his hands in despair. “He is mad, good people!” he was beginning. But both speeches stopped suddenly—and, in the dead silence that followed, a knocking was heard at the outer door.
“What is it?” was the general cry. People began running in and out. The excitement increased every moment. The Lord Chancellor, forgetting all the rules of Court-ceremony, ran full speed down the hall, and in a minute returned, pale and gasping for breath.
XXIV
The Beggar’s Return
“Your Imperial Highnesses!” he began. “It’s the old Beggar again! Shall we set the dogs at him?”
“Bring him here!” said the Emperor.
The Chancellor could scarcely believe his ears. “Here, your Imperial Highness? Did I rightly understand—.”
“Bring him here!” the Emperor thundered once more. The Chancellor tottered down the hall—and in another minute the crowd divided, and the poor old Beggar was seen entering the Banqueting-Hall.
He was indeed a pitiable object: the rags, that hung about him, were all splashed with mud: his white hair and his long beard were tossed about in wild disorder. Yet he walked upright, with a stately tread, as if used to command: and—strangest sight of all—Sylvie and Bruno came with him, clinging to his hands, and gazing at him with looks of silent love.
Men looked eagerly to see how the Emperor would receive the bold intruder. Would he hurl him from the steps of the dais? But no. To their utter astonishment, the Emperor knelt as the beggar approached, and with bowed head murmured “Forgive us!”
“Forgive us!” the Empress, kneeling at her husband’s side, meekly repeated.
The Outcast smiled. “Rise up!” he said.
