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It took much negotiation to induce the prince to reduce the sum to sixty thousand ducats, which the merchant raised and paid,—with a malediction on all words of compliment. The money flew like smoke from the prince’s hands, he being quite capable of squandering the revenues of a kingdom.
The little prince in a very grave and dignified manner, extended his hand, not for Noll to shake, but that he might kneel down and kiss it. "Nephew," said Sir Oliver, "pay your duty to the prince." "I owe him no duty," cried Noll, thrusting aside the prince’s hand, with a rude laugh. "Why should I kiss that boy’s hand?" All the courtiers were amazed and confounded, and Sir Oliver the most of all.
He is near the prince’s age, and will be but too happy to wait upon his Royal Highness." "Send for him, man! send for him!" said the king. But, as it happened, there was no need of sending for Master Noll. While King James was speaking, a rugged, bold-faced, sturdy little urchin thrust himself through the throng of courtiers and attendants, and greeted the prince with a broad stare.
But, when I spoke in that country, it was like a man talking in the streets, to another looking out from the top of a steeple, unless when I was placed on a table, or held in any person’s hand.” I told him, “I had likewise observed another thing, that, when I first got into the ship, and the sailors stood all about me, I thought they were the most little contemptible creatures I had ever beheld.” For indeed, while I was in that prince’s country, I could never endure to look in a glass, after mine eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of myself.
And lastly, we call to remembrance, the final scene of that sombre tragedy, when, as a result of the Prince’s violation of his sacred engagement, a number of the betrayed companions of Quddús were assembled in the camp of the enemy, were stripped of their possessions, and sold as slaves, the rest being either killed by the spears and swords of the officers, or torn asunder, or bound to trees and riddled with bullets, or blown from the mouths of cannon and consigned to the flames, or else being disemboweled and having their heads impaled on spears and lances.
That night the Duke of Feria and two other lords remained in the prince’s room,—now his prison. Each succeeding night two of the six appointed lords performed this duty. They were not allowed to wear their swords in the presence of the prince, but his meat was cut up before serving, as no knife was permitted to be used at his meals.
In the evening groups sitting at the door, he may sometimes see with a sigh how wealth and the prince’s favour cause a booby to pass for a Solon, and be reverenced as such, while perhaps a poor neglected Camoëns stands silent at a distance, awed by the dazzling glare of wealth and power.
"What have you been about? Down on your knees, this instant, and ask the prince’s pardon. How dare you lay your hands on the king’s Majesty’s royal son?" "He struck me first," grumbled the valiant little Noll; "and I’ve only given him his due." Sir Oliver and the guests lifted up their hands in astonishment and horror.
The mouldering bones of a holy Franciscan, who had died a hundred years before, and had always been the object of the prince’s especial veneration, were taken from their coffin and laid on the boy’s bed, and the cloth that had enclosed the dead man’s skull was placed on his forehead.
The prince’s son, who was among them, came up to me. He was dressed in a white linen jacket and trousers, with a white English hat. He spoke tolerable English. He requested me to go to his father’s house, which was a long, low, whitewashed building, with a four-pounder sticking out of a kind of window at one end of it, and before it was a mud battery of four more four-pounders in bad repair.
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