Not a lesson to learn--but no! I always liked learning my lessons. Anyhow, to choose the lessons I liked best, to have as many books to read and dolls to play with as ever I wanted: above all, to be free and at rest, with nobody to tease or trouble or scold me, would be charming.
For I was a lonely little thing, who liked quietness--as many children do; which other children, and sometimes grown-up people even, cannot understand. And so I can understand Prince Dolor.
After his first despair, he was not merely comfortable, but actually happy in his solitude, doing everything for himself, and enjoying everything by himself--until bedtime. Then he did not like it at all. No more, I suppose, than other children would have liked my im-aginary house in a tree when they had had sufficient of their own company.
But the Prince had to bear it--and he did bear it, like a prince--for fully five days. All that time he got up in the morning and went to bed at night without having spoken to a creature, or, indeed, heard a single sound.
For even his little lark was silent; and as for his traveling-cloak, either he never thought about it, or else it had been spirited away--for he made no use of it, nor attempted to do so.
A very strange existence it was, those five lonely days. He never entirely forgot it. It threw him back upon himself, and into himself --in a way that all of us have to learn when we grow up, and are the better for it; but it is somewhat hard learning.
On the sixth day Prince Dolor had a strange composure in his look, but he was very grave and thin and white. He had nearly come to the end of his provisions--and what was to happen next? Get out of the tower he could not: the ladder the deaf-mute used was always carried away again; and if it had not been, how could the poor boy have used it? And even if he slung or flung himself down, and by miraculous chance came alive to the foot of the tower, how could he run away?
Fate had been very hard to him, or so it seemed.
He made up his mind to die. Not that he wished to die; on the contrary, there was a great deal that he wished to live to do; but if he must die, he must. Dying did not seem so very dreadful; not even to lie quiet like his uncle, whom he had entirely forgiven now, and neither be miserable nor naughty any more, and escape all those horrible things that he had seen going on outside the palace, in that awful place which was called "the world.""It's a great deal nicer here," said the poor little Prince, and collected all his pretty things round him: his favorite pictures, which he thought he should like to have near him when he died; his books and toys--no, he had ceased to care for toys now; he only liked them because he had done so as a child. And there he sat very calm and patient, like a king in his castle, waiting for the end.
"Still, I wish I had done something first--something worth doing, that somebody might remember me by," thought he. "Suppose Ihad grown a man, and had had work to do, and people to care for, and was so useful and busy that they liked me, and perhaps even forgot Iwas lame? Then it would have been nice to live, I think."A tear came into the little fellow's eyes, and he listened intently through the dead silence for some hopeful sound.
Was there one?--was it his little lark, whom he had almost forgotten? No, nothing half so sweet. But it really was something--something which came nearer and nearer, so that there was no mistaking it. It was the sound of a trumpet, one of the great silver trumpets so admired in Nomansland. Not pleasant music, but very bold, grand, and inspiring.
As he listened to it the boy seemed to recall many things which had slipped his memory for years, and to nerve himself for whatever might be going to happen.
What had happened was this.
The poor condemned woman had not been such a wicked woman after all. Perhaps her courage was not wholly disinterested, but she had done a very heroic thing. As soon as she heard of the death and burial of the King and of the changes that were taking place in the country, a daring idea came into her head--to set upon the throne of Nomansland its rightful heir. Thereupon she persuaded the deaf-mute to take her away with him, and they galloped like the wind from city to city, spreading everywhere the news that Prince Dolor's death and burial had been an invention concocted by his wicked uncle that he was alive and well, and the noblest young prince that ever was born.
It was a bold stroke, but it succeeded. The country, weary perhaps of the late King's harsh rule, and yet glad to save itself from the horrors of the last few days, and the still further horrors of no rule at all, and having no particular interest in the other young princes, jumped at the idea of this Prince, who was the son of their late good King and the beloved Queen Dolorez.
"Hurrah for Prince Dolor! Let Prince Dolor be our sovereign!" rang from end to end of the kingdom. Everybody tried to remember what a dear baby he once was--how like his mother, who had been so sweet and kind, and his father, the finest-looking king that ever reigned. Nobody remembered his lameness--or, if they did, they passed it over as a matter of no consequence. They were determined to have him reign over them, boy as he was--perhaps just because he was a boy, since in that case the great nobles thought they should be able to do as they liked with the country.
Accordingly, with a fickleness not confined to the people of Nomansland, no sooner was the late King laid in his grave than they pronounced him to have been a usurper; turned all his family out of the palace, and left it empty for the reception of the new sovereign, whom they went to fetch with great rejoicing, a select body of lords, gentlemen, and soldiers traveling night and day in solemn procession through the country until they reached Hopeless Tower.
