as free. But,
O, Lionel! a kingdom is a word of might, and gently sounding are the terms
that compose the style of royalty. Were not the mightiest men of the olden
times kings? Alexander was a king; Solomon, the wisest of men, was a king;
Napoleon was a king; Caesar died in his attempt to become one, and
Cromwell, the puritan and king-killer, aspired to regality. The father of
Adrian yielded up the already broken sceptre of England; but I will rear
the fallen plant, join its dismembered frame, and exalt it above all the
flowers of the field.

"You need not wonder that I freely discover Adrian's abode. Do not
suppose that I am wicked or foolish enough to found my purposed
sovereignty on a fraud, and one so easily discovered as the truth
or falsehood of the Earl's insanity. I am just come from him. Before I
decided on my marriage with Idris, I resolved to see him myself again, and
to judge of the probability of his recovery.--He is irrecoverably mad."

I gasped for breath--

"I will not detail to you," continued Raymond, "the melancholy particulars.
You shall see him, and judge for yourself; although I fear this visit,
useless to him, will be insufferably painful to you. It has weighed on my
spirits ever since. Excellent and gentle as he is even in the downfall of
his reason, I do not worship him as you do, but I would give all my hopes
of a crown and my right hand to boot, to see him restored to himself."

His voice expressed the deepest compassion: "Thou most unaccountable
being," I cried, "whither will thy actions tend, in all this maze of
purpose in which thou seemest lost?"

"Whither indeed? To a crown, a golden be-gemmed crown, I hope; and yet I
dare not trust and though I dream of a crown and wake for one, ever and
anon a busy devil whispers to me, that it is but a fool's cap that I seek,
and that were I wise, I should trample on it, and take in its stead, that
which is worth all the crowns of the east and presidentships of the west."

"And what is that?"

"If I do make it my choice, then you shall know; at present I dare not
speak, even think of it."

Again he was silent, and after a pause turned to me laughingly. When scorn
did not inspire his mirth, when it was genuine gaiety that painted his
features with a joyous expression, his beauty became super-eminent, divine.
"Verney," said he, "my first act when I become King of England, will be to
unite with the Greeks, take Constantinople, and subdue all Asia.