Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

you what you'll do now, Harry, to settle all things and lest the fit should take me ever to be mad with you on this score again. You don't choose to drink more than's becoming?-Well, you're right, and I'm wrong. "Twould be a burning shame of me to make of you what I have made of myself. We must do only as well as we can. But I will ensure you against the future; and before we take another glass-there's the priest-and you, Tom Ferrally there, step you for my swearing book. Harry Ormond, you shall take an oath against drinking more glasses than you please evermore, and then you're safe from me. But stay—you are a heretic. Phoo! what am I saying? 'twas seeing the priest put that word heretic in my head-you're not a catholic, I mean. But an oath's an oath, taken before priest or parson -an oath, taken how you will, will operate. But stay, to make all easy, 'tis I'll take it."

66

Against drinking, you! king Corny!" said father Jos, stopping his hand, " and in case of the gout in your stomach ?"

66

Against drinking! do you think I'd perjure myself? No! But against pressing him to it-I'll take my oath I'll never ask him to drink another glass more than he likes."

The oath was taken, and king Corny concluded the ceremony by observing that, after all, there was no character he despised more than that of a sot. But every gentleman knew that there was a wide and material difference betwixt a gentleman who was fond of his bottle, and that unfortunate being, an habitual drunkard. For his own part, it was his established rule never to go to bed without a proper quantity of liquor under his belt; but he defied the universe to say he was ever known to be drunk.

VOL. XIII.

Z

At a court where such ingenious casuistry prevailed, it was happy for our hero that an unqualifying oath now protected his resolution.

[ocr errors]

CHAPTER V.

66

IN the middle of the night our hero was wakened by a loud bellowing. It was only king Corny in a paroxysm of the gout. His majesty was naturally of a very impatient temper, and his maxims of philosophy encouraged him to the most unrestrained expression of his feelings-the maxims of his philosophy for he had read, though in a most desultory manner, and he had thought often deeply, and not seldom justly. The turns of his mind, and the questions he asked, were sometimes utterly unexpected. Pray, now," said he to Harry, who stood beside his bed, now that I've a moment's ease-did you ever hear of the stoics that the bookmen talk of? and can you tell me what good any one of them ever got by making it a point to make no noise, when they'd be punished and racked with pains of body or mind? Why, I will tell you all they got-all they got was no pity: who would give them pity that did not require it? I could bleed to death in a bath, as well as the best of them, if I chose it; or chew a bullet, if I set my teeth to it, with any man in a regiment—but where's the use? nature knows best, and she says roar!” And he roared-for another twinge seized him.

Nature said sleep! several times this night to Harry, and to every body in the palace; but they did not sleep, they could not, while the roaring

continued so all had reason to rejoice, and Moriarty in particular, when his majesty's paroxysm was past. Harry was in a sound sleep at twelve o'clock, the next day, when he was summoned into the royal presence. He found king Corny sitting at ease in his bed, and that bed strewed over with a variety of roots and leaves, weeds and plants. An old woman was hovering over the fire, stirring something in a black kettle. "Simples these-of wonderful unknown power," said king Corny to Harry, as he approached the bed; " and I'll engage you don't know the name even of the half of them."

Harry confessed his ignorance.

"No shame for you-was you as wise as king Solomon himself, you might not know them, for he did not, nor couldn't, he that had never set his foot a grousing on an Irish bog. Sheelah, come you over, and say what's this?"

The old woman now came to assist at this bed of botany, and with spectacles slipping off, and pushed on her nose continually, peered over each green thing, and named in Irish " every herb that sips the

dew."

Sheelah was deeper in Irish lore than king Corny could pretend to be: but then he humbled her with the "black hellebore of the ancients," and he had, in an unaccountable manner, affected her imagination by talking of " that famous bowl of narcotic poisons, which that great man Socrates drank off." Sheclah would interrupt herself in the middle of a sentence, and curtsy if she heard him pronounce the name of Socrates-and at the mention of the bowl, she would regularly sigh, and exclaim, " Lord save us!-But that was a wicked bowl."

Then after a cast of her eyes up to heaven, and

crossing herself on the forehead, she would take up her discourse at the word where she had left off.

King Corny set to work compounding plasters and embrocations, preparing all sorts of decoctions of roots and leaves, famous through the country. And while he directed and gesticulated from his bed, the old woman worked over the fire in obedience to his commands. Sometimes, however, not with that "prompt and mute obedience" which the great require.

[ocr errors]

It was fortunate for Moriarty that king Corny, not having the use of his nether limbs, could not attend even in his gouty chair to administer the medicines he had made, and to see them fairly swallowed. Sheelah, whose conscience was easy on this point, contented herself with giving him a strict charge to "take every bottle to the last drop." All she insisted upon for her own part was, that she must tie the charm round his neck and arm. She would fain have removed the dressings of the wound to substitute plasters of her own, over which she had pronounced certain prayers or incantations; but Moriarty, who had seized and held fast one good principle of surgery, that the air must never be let into the wound, held mainly to this maxim, and all Sheelah could obtain was permission to clap on her charmed plaster over the dressing.

In due time, or as king Corny triumphantly observed, in " a wonderful short period," Moriarty got quite well, long before the king's gout was cured, even with the assistance of the black hellebore of the ancients. King Corny was so well pleased with his patient for doing such credit to his medical skill, that he gave him and his family a cabin, and spot of land, in the islands--a cabin near the palace; and at

Harry's request made him his wood-ranger and his gamekeeper—the one a lucrative place, the other a sinecure.

Master Harry-prince Harry-was now looked up to as a person all powerful with the master; and petitions and requests to speak for them, to speak just one word, came pouring from all sides: but however enviable his situation as favourite and prince presumptive might appear to others, it was not in all respects comfortable to himself.

Formerly, when a boy, in his visits to the Black Islands, he used to have a little companion of whom he was fond-Dora-king Corny's daughter. Missing her much, he inquired from her father where she was gone, and when she was likely to return.

"She is gone off to the continent-to the continent of Ireland, that is; but not banished for any misdemeanour. You know," said king Corny, "'tis generally considered as a punishment in the Black Islands to be banished to Ireland. A threat of that kind I find sufficient to bring the most refractory and ill-disposed of my subjects, if I had any of that description, to rason in the last resort; but to that ultimate law I have not recourse, except in extremé cases: I understand my business of king too well to wear out either shame or fear; but you are no legislator yet, prince Harry. So what was you asking me about Dora? She is only gone a trip to the continent, to her aunt's, by the mother's side, miss O'Faley, that you never saw, to get the advantage of a dancing-master, which myself don't think she wants -a natural carriage, with native graces, being, in my unsophisticated opinion, worth all the dancingmaster's positions, contortions, or drillings; but her

« AnteriorContinua »