oving of it. He requested the lord chamberlain
therefore to read it. His Lordship commenced at once but the
difficulties he seemed to encounter, and the fits of stammering that
seized him, roused the king's suspicion tenfold. He called the princess.

'I trouble His Lordship too much,' he said to her: 'you can read print
well, my child--let me hear how you can read writing. Take that paper
from His Lordship's hand, and read it to me from beginning to end,
while my lord drinks a glass of my favourite wine, and watches for your
blunders.'

'Pardon me, Your Majesty,' said the lord chamberlain, with as much of a
smile as he was able to extemporize, 'but it were a thousand pities to
put the attainments of Her Royal Highness to a test altogether too
severe. Your Majesty can scarcely with justice expect the very organs
of her speech to prove capable of compassing words so long, and to her
so unintelligible.'

'I think much of my little princess and her capabilities,' returned the
king, more and more aroused. 'Pray, my lord, permit her to try.'

'Consider, Your Majesty: the thing would be altogether without
precedent. It would be to make sport of statecraft,' said the lord
chamberlain.

'Perhaps you are right, my lord,' answered the king, with more meaning
than he intended should be manifest, while to his growing joy he felt
new life and power throbbing in heart and brain. 'So this morning we
shall read no further. I am indeed ill able for business of such
weight.'

'Will Your Majesty please sign your royal name here?' said the lord
chamberlain, preferring the request as a matter of course, and
approaching with the feather end of the pen pointed to a spot where
there was a great red seal.

'Not today, my lord,' replied the king.

'It is of the greatest importance, Your Majesty,' softly insisted the
other.

'I descried no such importance in it,' said the king.

'Your Majesty heard but a part.'

'And I can hear no more today.'

'I trust Your Majesty has ground enough, in a case of necessity like
the present, to sign upon the representation of his loyal subject and
chamberlain? Or shall I call the lord chancellor?' he added, rising.

'There is no need. I have the very highest opinion of your judgement,
my lord,' answered the king; 'that is, with respect to means: we might
differ as to ends.'

The lord chamberlain made yet further attempts at persuasion; but they
grew feebler and feebler, and he was at l