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The Prince and the Pauper | Mark Twain | |
Chapter XIV. 'Le Roi est mort--vive le Roi.' |
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Toward daylight of the same morning, Tom Canty stirred out of a heavy sleep and opened his eyes in the dark. He lay silent a few moments, trying to analyse his confused thoughts and impressions, and get some sort of meaning out of them; then suddenly he burst out in a rapturous but guarded voice-- "I see it all, I see it all! Now God be thanked, I am indeed awake at last! Come, joy! vanish, sorrow! Ho, Nan! Bet! kick off your straw and hie ye hither to my side, till I do pour into your unbelieving ears the wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to astonish the soul of man withal! . . . Ho, Nan, I say! Bet!" A dim form appeared at his side, and a voice said-- "Wilt deign to deliver thy commands?" "Commands? . . . O, woe is me, I know thy voice! Speak thou--who am I?" "Thou? In sooth, yesternight wert thou the Prince of Wales; today art thou my most gracious liege, Edward, King of England." Tom buried his head among his pillows, murmuring plaintively-- "Alack, it was no dream! Go to thy rest, sweet sir--leave me to my sorrows." Tom slept again, and after a time he had this pleasant dream. He thought it was summer, and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow called Goodman's Fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red whiskers and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, "Dig by that stump." He did so, and found twelve bright new pennies--wonderful riches! Yet this was not the best of it; for the dwarf said-- |
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The Prince and the Pauper Mark Twain |
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