walk up and down his apartment at a furious pace,
like a wounded bull in an arena, trailing from his horn the colored
streamers and the iron darts. At last he began to take comfort in the
expression of his violent feelings.

"Miserable wretch that he is! not only does he squander my finances, but
with his ill-gotten plunder he corrupts secretaries, friends, generals,
artists, and all, and tries to rob me of the one to whom I am most
attached. This is the reason that perfidious girl so boldly took
his part! Gratitude! and who can tell whether it was not a stronger
feeling--love itself?" He gave himself up for a moment to the bitterest
reflections. "A satyr!" he thought, with that abhorrent hate with which
young men regard those more advanced in life, who still think of love.
"A man who has never found opposition or resistance in any one, who
lavishes his gold and jewels in every direction, and who retains his
staff of painters in order to take the portraits of his mistresses
in the costume of goddesses." The king trembled with passion as he
continued, "He pollutes and profanes everything that belongs to me! He
destroys everything that is mine. He will be my death at last, I
know. That man is too much for me; he is my mortal enemy, but he
shall forthwith fall! I hate him--I hate him--I hate him!" and as he
pronounced these words, he struck the arm of the chair in which he was
sitting violently, over and over again, and then rose like one in an
epileptic fit. "To-morrow! to-morrow! oh, happy day!" he murmured, "when
the sun rises, no other rival shall that brilliant king of space possess
but me. That man shall fall so low that when people look at the abject
ruin my anger shall have wrought, they will be forced to confess at
last and at least that I am indeed greater than he." The king, who was
incapable of mastering his emotions any longer, knocked over with a blow
of his fist a small table placed close to his bedside, and in the very
bitterness of anger, almost weeping, and half-suffocated, he threw
himself on his bed, dressed as he was, and bit the sheets in his
extremity of passion, trying to find repose of body at least there. The
bed creaked beneath his weight, and with the exception of a few broken
sounds, emerging, or, one might say, exploding, from his overburdened
chest, absolute silence soon reigned in the chamber of Morpheus.

Chapter XVII. High Treason.

The ungovernable fury which took possession of the