Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1904-06-15
A KINGS TRAGEDY.
was a king, even in my cradle.

L was King, even IN my cradle
| had been born. | had to die. The
only two things they said | could share
with my people.
Majesty, 1t hemmed me in on every
side. The reverence of it filled the lula
bies that were sung in my baby ears. At
every turn / was impiored to remember
it. It made me thing apart.
For twenty years | was stranger to
everything that means life!
And then l awoke in spite of them, in
spite of my kingship; |
ingi A ray of sunlight crept into my
poor. starved, ignorant soul.
The king was thing apart no longer.
| was i'll, so i'll that they grew fright
ered, and sent me into the apple gardens
of Brittany to recover. Aht L met her
therel She was no. princess of the
blood, not lady of quanty. She was
lust a little girl with q wealth of love IN
her eyes, and golden youthtulness that
bewildered me, and that made the Car
den of Eden real to me- For one brief
summer / was allowed my birthright, and
dreamed my dream, as other men. |
heard whispered words of love, amazing
love. bewildering love l kissed
the eyes that never knew my royalty and
never guessed the gulf between us. The
pings. and the man breathed Gods air,
and realized Gods earth.
She was all the world to me, all this
and the next, and my kingshlp was obllt-
Grated l flung custom to the winds of
heaven. She made me realize that love
can burst the hearts of empires and level
majesty in the dust. | loved her. Fer
a flash of time l was left in peace, alone
with love = Memory was q dead
vampire.
Then they came for me. |
crued for mercy; but the vampire was
alive, and l had lost my dream. | re-
turned to captivity, a helpless fugitive
from tate.
In time, they told me that I had set
tied down again with wonderful ease.
But | knew better. The man in NE,
the awakened man in me, refused to be
smothered out of existence again and
made the court a purgatOry.
All day, all night, [ thirsted for her.
Love was all-powerful l could not beat
it out of my aching heart. l starved it;
but it thrlved apace. | tried to murder
it: but it sprang to life again and again,
and stronger each time.
And, at last 1t drove me back to her.
[ saw her again. She had
changed < She prayed to me to
justify her . and l had to tell
her s. e that | was King
She stared at me like dying woman.
Later l heard the awful thing the viii
layers whispered about her = and
the name they called it by She
came to me again, before they parted us
forever. She was i'll, and the gold had
gone from her hair But mystic love re-
manned like a fairy wreath about her.
She kept staring at me, imploring me to
be impossible. an agony of longing for
the King to abdicate, and the man to
live, in her eyes. But the King was
devil and as hard as stone. The man
was a pitiful coward and cried for mer-
cy. But the King strangled him with a
brutal force, and urged that a whole
empire blocked the way - She
was unable to realize the barrier, the
immense barrieri
| was dragged back to my kingdom to
play the King again. This time it was
forever, though the old longing, the same
love, swept into my empty soul and fought
for mastery as it had done before
But the King, God bless him! con-
quered again and again. And the man.
GOD pity him! was heap of despair and
love, like a broken baube-was a phan-
tom that was half sweet, all bitter to re-
member. And y
have nothing left Of that summer =
nothing but the memory of her eyes blaz-
ing with hope, dulling with despair black
Things wrapped holloway in mists of pale
ness, leading me away from Life and
Majesty and Duty, drawing me stem hy
step into those fathomless deeps the world
calls graves, where men lie and worms
eat them: where | must lie when at last
the man conquers the King. and Death in
his turn takes the conqueror captive
All! then a toi,-Mauriel A
Pollexfen III London Free Lance