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$Unique_ID{bob01452}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Prince And The Pauper, The
Chapter XXX}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{king
tom
upon
}
$Date{1909}
$Log{}
Title: Prince And The Pauper, The
Author: Twain, Mark
Date: 1909
Chapter XXX
Tom's Progress
Whilst the true king wandered about the land, poorly clad, poorly fed,
cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and murderers
in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all impartially, the
mock King Tom Canty enjoyed a quite different experience.
When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side
for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more every day; in
a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and delightfulness.
He lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died; his embarrassments
departed, and gave place to an easy and confident bearing. He worked the
whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit.
He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his presence
when he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with
them, with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances. It
no longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at
parting.
He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed
with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It came to be a proud
pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of officers
of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he doubled his guard
of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. He liked to hear the bugles
sounding down the long corridors, and the distant voices responding, "Way
for the King!"
He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and
seeming to be something more than the Lord Protector's mouthpiece. He
liked to receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen to
the affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who called
him "brother." Oh, happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!
He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more; he found his four
hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. The
adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears. He
remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all that
were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws; yet upon
occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and
give him a look that would make him tremble. Once, when his royal
"sister," the grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with him against
the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would otherwise be
jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that their august late
father's prisons had sometimes contained as high as sixty thousand convicts
at one time, and that during his admirable reign he had delivered seventy-
two thousand thieves and robbers over to death by the executioner, ^* the
boy was filled with generous indignation, and commanded her to go to her
closet, and beseech God to take away the stone that was in her breast, and
give her a human heart.
[Footnote *: Hume's England.]
Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful
prince who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to
avenge him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate? Yes; his first
royal days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts
about the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return and happy
restoration to his native rights and splendors. But as time wore on, and
the prince did not come, Tom's mind became more and more occupied with his
new and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the vanished
monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he did intrude
upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome specter, for he made Tom
feel guilty and ashamed.
Tom's poor mother and sisters traveled the same road out of his mind.
At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them; but
later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and
betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty place,
and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums, made him
shudder. At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost wholly. And
he was content, even glad; for, whenever their mournful and accusing faces
did rise before him now, they made him feel more despicable than the worms
that crawl.
At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to sleep in
his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded by
the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for to-morrow was the day appointed for
his solemn crowning as king of England. At that same hour, Edward, the
true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with travel, and
clothed in rags and shreds, - his share of the results of the riot, - was
wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest
certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of Westminster
Abbey, busy as ants; they were making the last preparation for the royal
coronation.