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"Certainly," said the King; "that is, if the incognita be really entitled to the honour. It may be as well to inquire her title there are more madwomen abroad than the Duchess of Newcastle. I will walk into the anteroom myself, and receive your answer."
The madwomen round her appeared to consider her assumption of royalty as a very good joke, for the homage they rendered her was quizzical in the extreme. There are times when these people seem to have a vague consciousness of their situation; when gleams of sense break in upon them, and whisper the awful truth to their minds.
"And this" he began without preamble in that great resonant voice of his, that was like a blast of a trumpet "and this, my countrymen, is the answer which the plain people of this great city make to the corrupted and misguided press that would crucify any man who dares defy it." He spoke for more than an hour, and when he was done his hearers were as madmen and madwomen.
Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians, and philosophers, all came successively to the top, and seized their moment, if not their hour, wherein to chide or pray or preach or protest. The faces were a study.
Of all the madwomen who have sung and said, since the days of Hamlet the Dane, if Ophelia be the most affecting, Madge Wildfire was the most provoking. The procurator-fiscal was in despair. "I'll take some measures with this d d Bess of Bedlam," said he, "that shall make her find her tongue."
"It's so fearfully old-fashioned, Victorian, to be simple nowadays," she laughed. "That's it," he cried. "The terror of your modern hostess, simplicity. You can't go out to dine unless some madwoman drags you away from your coffee to the auction table, where other madmen and madwomen scowl at you all the evening over their cards. Or else they dance. Dance! Dance! Hop! Skip!
'How do YOU get on? 'Oh pretty well, sir! We works hard, and we lives hard like the sodgers! In another room, a kind of purgatory or place of transition, six or eight noisy madwomen were gathered together, under the superintendence of one sane attendant.
She would lie on her bed rigid, with her eyes open; then hiccoughs would come upon her and she would writhe and struggle, acquiring the frightful strength of those hysterical madwomen whom one has to tie down in order to prevent them from breaking their heads against a wall. This return to former vigour, these sudden attacks, gave her a terrible shock.
Both she and Aglaya stood and waited as though in expectation, and both looked at the prince like madwomen. But he, perhaps, did not understand the full force of this challenge; in fact, it is certain he did not. All he could see was the poor despairing face which, as he had said to Aglaya, "had pierced his heart for ever."
Of all the madwomen who have sung and said, since the days of Hamlet the Dane, if Ophelia be the most affecting, Madge Wildfire was the most provoking. The procurator-fiscal was in despair. "I'll take some measures with this d d Bess of Bedlam," said he, "that shall make her find her tongue."
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