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But ten years is a long time. The boy-king had become but a vague memory to the subjects who could recall him at all.
The queen, shocked at so gross a breach of etiquette, and even of kindly feeling, rose from her seat, and, advancing, withdrew the hand of the duchess from her son, and said to him, in a low voice, "You should dance first with the English princess." The boy-king sulkily replied, "I am not fond of little girls." Both Henrietta and her daughter overheard this uncourteous and cruel remark.
Pothinus and the boy-king, both, as may be conceived, very dissatisfied at once with the peremptory requisition of all debts and with the intervention in the throne-dispute which could only issue, as it did, in the favour of Cleopatra, sent in order to pacify the Roman demands the treasures of the temple and the gold plate of the king with intentional ostentation to be melted at the mint; with increasing indignation the Egyptians who were pious even to superstition, and who rejoiced in the world-renowned magnificence of their court as if it were a possession of their own beheld the bare walls of their temples and the wooden cups on the table of their king.
Remonstrances and arguments were alike unavailing; the boy-King declined to listen to either; and Marie ultimately commanded that he should undergo the chastisement of the rod.
In some way they never knew how they managed to reach the scene of the tragedy, and Sir Paul, at his urgent request, was left alone with the body of his son. Oh, God! Could he bear this last blow and live? After a time, when reason began to re-assert itself, he searched and found the letters that had told the Boy-king the story of his birth.
The stir and commotion as that tragic company started to their feet, the vain shout for help, the clash of arms as the fierce attendants rushed in and seized the victims, the deadly calm of the two successful conspirators who had planned the whole, and the pale terrified face of the boy-king, but ten years old, who "grat verie sore," and vainly appealed to the Chancellor for God's sake to let them go, make one of the most impressive of historical pictures.
But Richard faced the Kentishmen with the same cool courage with which he faced the men of Essex. "What need ye, my masters?" cried the boy-king as he rode boldly up to the front of the bowmen. "I am your Captain and your King; follow me!"
But the English boy-king, Edward VI, gave him a pension, which was renewed by Queen Mary; and his last ten years were spent in England, where he died in the odor of sanctity as Governor of the Muscovy Company and citizen of London.
But one of the boys, the son of a rich noble of the court of Astyages, refused to do as he was bid by Cyrus, and according to the rule of the game, he had to submit to a beating at the hand of the boy-king.
A sudden flight back to Stirling only saved him from seizure at Doune; and a few months later, as James hunted at Ruthven, he found the hand of the Master of Glamis on his bridle-rein. "Better bairns greet than bearded men," was the gruff answer to his tears, as his favourite fled into exile and the boy-king saw himself again a tool in the hands of the lords.
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