choly, and in a few days he began to feel that
he was about to die. As he grew worse his mind became more and more
excited, and his attendants from time to time heard him moaning, in
his anguish, "Oh, shame! shame! I am a conquered king--a conquered
king! Cursed be the day on which I was born, and cursed be the
children that I leave behind me!"

The priests at his bedside endeavored to remonstrate with him against
these imprecations. They told him that it was a dreadful thing for a
father to curse his own children, and they urged him to retract what
he had said. But he declared that he would not. He persisted in
cursing all his children except Geoffrey Clifford, the son of
Rosamond, who was then at his bedside, and who had never forsaken him.
The king grew continually more and more excited and disordered in
mind, until at length he sank into a raving delirium, and in that
state he died.

A dead king is a very helpless and insignificant object, whatever may
have been the terror which he inspired while he was alive. As long as
Henry continued to breathe, the attendants around him paid him great
deference, and observed every possible form of obsequious respect, for
they did not know but that he might recover, to live and reign, and
lord it over them and their fortunes for fifteen or twenty years to
come; but as soon as the breath was out of his body, all was over.
Richard, his son, was now king, and from Henry nothing whatever was
any longer to be hoped or feared. So the mercenary and heartless
courtiers--the ministers, priests, bishops and barons--began at once
to strip the body of all the valuables which the king had worn, and
also to seize and appropriate every thing in the apartments of the
palace which they could take away. These things were their
perquisites, they said; it being customary, as they alleged, that the
personal effects of a deceased king should be divided among those who
were his attendants when he died. Having secured this plunder, these
people disappeared, and it was with the utmost difficulty that
assistance enough could be procured to wrap the body in a
winding-sheet, and to bring a hearse and horses to bear it away to the
abbey where it was to be interred. Examples like this--of which the
history of every monarchy is full--throw a great deal of light upon
what is called the principle of loyalty in the hearts of those who
attend upon kings.

While the procession was on the way to the abbey where