ry with travelling all night, and could not
see him: and when lastly, upon his insisting in a positive and angry
manner to see them, they came to greet him, whom should he see in
their company but the hated Gonerill, who had come to tell her own
story, and set her sister against the king her father!

This sight much moved the old man, and still more to see Regan take
her by the hand: and he asked Gonerill if she was not ashamed to look
upon his old white beard? And Regan advised him to go home again
with Gonerill, and live with her peaceably, dismissing half of his
attendants, and to ask her forgiveness; for he was old and wanted
discretion, and must be ruled and led by persons that had more
discretion than himself. And Lear shewed how preposterous that would
sound, if he were to down on his knees, and beg of his own daughter
for food and raiment, and he argued against such an unnatural
dependence; declaring his resolution never to return with her, but to
stay where he was with Regan, he and his hundred knights: for he said
that she had not forgot the half of the kingdom which he had endowed
her with, and that her eyes were not fierce like Gonerill's, but mild
and kind. And he said that rather than return to Gonerill, with half
his train cut off, he would go over to France, and beg a wretched
pension of the king there, who had married his youngest daughter
without a portion.

But he was mistaken in expecting kinder treatment of Regan than he
had experienced from her sister Gonerill. As if willing to outdo her
sister in unfilial behaviour, she declared that she thought fifty
knights too many to wait upon him: that five-and-twenty were enough.
Then Lear, nigh heart-broken, turned to Gonerill, and said that he
would go back with her, for her fifty doubled five-and-twenty, and so
her love was twice as much as Regan's. But Gonerill excused herself,
and said, what need of so many as five-and-twenty? or even ten? or
five? when he might be waited upon by her servants, or her sister's
servants? So these two wicked daughters, as if they strove to exceed
each other in cruelty to their old father who had been so good to
them, by little and little would have abated him of all his train, all
respect (little enough for him that once commanded a kingdom) which
was left him to shew that he had once been a king! Not that a splendid
train is essential to happiness, but from a king to a beggar is a hard
change, from commanding millions t