Page:Stories after Nature.pdf/58

34 the best means to save his life, her women came running to her in great distress, crying that the king was dead. She flew to his chamber, and found him in the arms of his attendants, a hideous spectacle. Having gloried greatly at Christian's distress, he ate and drank so freely as to cause a surfeit; and being left in bed by his attendants, he had shifted his head from the pillow, so that it hung down by the bed, and so beastly insensible was he that he could not release himself. The blood flowed into his head, that his eyes were black, and starting from their sockets; his cheeks blue and puffed up; and his tongue swollen from beyond his teeth, and as black as ink. In vain they bled him, and applied baths; he was dead: like the violent beast he had lived, the victim of his own grossness. His daughter, seeing this, felt shocked, and was very miserable.

Having buried him, she bethought herself of the anxiety of Christian, and went to him, not telling him of these things. His penetrating eye soon discovered some sorrow at her heart, which he was too delicate to ask the cause of, but did all in his power to comfort her. She, feeling this, was melted to tenderness, and said, "Christian, I have an offer to make to thee. There is nothing on earth thou desirest so much