Page:The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray Vol.20.pdf/190

162 enough. My dear Queen, you must see and have some parties. I prefer dinners, but of course you will be for balls. Your everlasting blue velvet quite tires me: and, my love, I should like you to have a new necklace. Order one. Not more than a hundred or a hundred and ﬁfty thousand pounds.”

“And Giglio, dear?” says the Queen.

“ ——”

“Oh, sir!” screams her Majesty. “Your own nephew! our late King’s only son.”

“Giglio may go to the tailor’s, and order the bills to be sent in to Glumboso to pay. Confound him. I mean bless his dear heart. He need not want for nothing; give him a couple of guineas for pocket-money, my dear: and you may as well order yourself bracelets while you are about the necklace, Mrs. V.”

Her Majesty, or Mrs. V., as the monarch facetiously called her (for even royalty will have its sport, and this august family were very much attached), embraced her husband, and, twining her arm round her daughter’s waist, they quitted the breakfast room in order to make all things ready for the princely stranger.

When they were gone, the smile that had lighted up the eyes of the husband and father fled— the pride of the King fled — the was alone. Had I the pen of a G. P. R. James, I would describe Valoroso’s torments in the choicest language; in which I would also depict his flashing eye, his distended nostril—his dressing-gown, pocket-handkerchief, and boots. But I need not say I have not the pen of that novelist; sufﬁce it to say, Valoroso was alone.

He rushed to the cupboard, seizing from the table one of the many egg-cups with which his princely board was served for the matin meal, drew out a bottle of right Nantz or Cognac, ﬁlled and emptied the cup several times, and laid it down with a hoarse “Ha, ha, ha! now Valoroso is a man again.

“But oh!” he went on (still sipping, I am sorry to say), “ere I was a king, I needed not this intoxicating draught; once I detested the hot brandy wine, and quaffed no other fount but nature’s rill. It dashes not more quickly o’er the rocks, than I did, as, with blunderbuss in hand, I brushed away the early morning dew, and shot the partridge, snipe, or antlered deer! Ah! well may England’s dramatist remark, ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears