d him that his staying
in her palace was inconvenient so long as he insisted upon keeping up
an establishment of a hundred knights; that this establishment was
useless and expensive, and only served to kill her court with riot and
feasting; and she prayed him that he would lessen their number, and
keep none but old men about him, such as himself, and fitting his age.

Lear at first could not believe his eyes or ears, nor that it was his
daughter who spoke so unkindly. He could not believe that she who had
received a crown from him could seek to cut off his train, and grudge
him the respect due to his old age. But she persisting in her undutiful
demand, the old man's rage was so excited, that he called her a
detested kite, and said that she spoke an untruth; and so indeed she
did, for the hundred knights were all men of choice behaviour and
sobriety of manners, skilled in all particulars of duty, and not given
to rioting or feasting, as she said. And he bid his horses to be
prepared, for he would go to his other daughter, Regan, he and his
hundred knights; and he spoke of ingratitude, and said it was a
marble-hearted devil, and showed more hideous in a child than the
sea-monster. And he cursed his eldest daughter Goneril so as was
terrible to hear; praying that she might never have a child, or if she
had, that it might live to return that scorn and contempt upon her
which she had shown to him that she might feel how sharper than a
serpent's tooth it was to have a thankless child. And Goneril's
husband, the duke of Albany, beginning to excuse himself for any share
which Lear might suppose he had in the unkindness, Lear would not hear
him out, but in a rage ordered his horses to be saddled, and set out
with his followers for the abode of Regan, his other daughter. And Lear
thought to himself how small the fault of Cordelia (if it was a fault)
now appeared, in comparison with her sister's, and he wept; and then he
was ashamed that such a creature as Goneril should have so much power
over his manhood as to make him weep.

Regan and her husband were keeping their court in great pomp and state
at their palace; and Lear despatched his servant Caius with letters to
his daughter, that she might be prepared for his reception, while he
and his train followed after. But it seems that Goneril had been
beforehand with him, sending letters also to Regan, accusing her father
of waywardness and ill humours, and advising her not to recei