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And then he recites the words of the decree,—all the honours of the tomb to the brave champion who had fallen in defence of hearth and home; but as to the body of the outcast and renegade, who had brought fire and sword against the city of his fathers, it shall lie unburied and dishonoured, to be mangled by dogs and vultures. "Such is my will," concludes the king (and we can fancy the majestic wave of the hand with which a great actor would have accompanied the words); and then he announces that, in order to secure obedience to his mandate, a watch had been already set to guard the body.

He has scarcely spoken before one of the watchmen enters—a personage alien from the general lofty vein of tragedy. He is emphatically "vulgar"—a true son