CHAPTER XXII.

The Fair Revenge.

called

THE elements of this story are to be found in the old poem Albion's England, to which we referred in the article on Charles Brandon and Mary Queen of France.

Aganippus, king of Argos, dying without heirs male, bequeathed his throne to his only daughter, the beautiful and beloved Daphles. This female succession was displeasing to a nobleman who held large possessions on the frontiers; and he came for the first time towards the court, not to pay his respects to the new queen, but to give her battle. Doracles (for that was his name) was not much known by the people. He had distinguished himself for as jealous an independence as a subject could well assume; and though he had been of use in repelling invasion during the latter years of the king, he had never made his appearance to receive his master's thanks personally. A correspondence, however, was understood to have gone on between him and several noblemen about the court; and there were those who, in spite of his inattention to popularity, suspected that it would go hard with the young queen, when the two armies came face to face.

But neither these subtle statesmen, nor the ambitious young soldier Doracles, were aware of the effects to be produced by a strong personal attachment. The young queen, amiable as she was beautiful, had involuntarily baffled his expectations from her courtiers, by exciting in the minds of some a real disinterested regard, while others nourished a hope of sharing her throne instead. At least they speculated upon becoming each the favorite minister, and held it a better thing to reign under that title and a charming mistress, than be the servants of a master, wilful and domineering. By the people she was adored;

and when she came riding out of her palace on the morning of the fight, with an unaccustomed spear standing up in its rest by her side, her diademed hair flowing a little off into the wind, her face paler than usual, but still tinted with its roses, and a look in which confidence in the love of her subjects, and tenderness for the wounds they were going to encounter, seemed to contend for the expression, the shout which they sent up would have told a stouter heart than a traitor's that the royal chamber was

secure.

The queen, during the conflict, remained in a tent upon an eminence, to which the younger leaders vied who should best spur up their smoking horses, to bring her good news from time to time. The battle was short and bloody. Doracles soon found that he had miscalculated his point; and all his skill and resolution could not set the error to rights. It was allowed, that if either courage or military talent could entitle him to the throne, he would have a right to it; but the popularity of Daphles supplied her cause with all the ardor which a lax state of subjection on the part of the more powerful nobles might have denied it. When her troops charged, or made any other voluntary movement, they put all their hearts into their blows; and when they were compelled to await the enemy, they stood as inflexible as walls of iron. It was like hammering upon metal statuary; or staking the fated horses upon spears riveted in stone. Doracles was taken prisoner. The queen, re-issuing from her tent, crowned with laurel, came riding down the eminence, and remained at the foot with her generals, while the prisoners were taken by. Her pale face kept as royal a countenance of composed pity as she could manage, while the commoner rebels passed along, aching with their wounded arms fastened behind, and shaking back their bloody and blinding locks for want of a hand to part them. But the blood mounted to her cheeks, when the proud and handsome Doracles, whom she now saw for the first time, blushed deeply as he cast a glance at his female conqueror, and then stepped haughtily along, hardling his gilded chains, as if they were an indifferent ornament. "I have conquered him," thought she; it is a heavy blow to so proud a head; and as he looks not unamiable, it might be politic, as weil

as courteous and kind in me, to turn his submission into a more willing one." Alas! pity was helping admiration to a kinder set of offices than the generous-hearted queen suspected. The captive went to his prison a conqueror after all, for Daphles loved him.

The second night, after having exhibited in her manners a strange mixture of joy and seriousness, and signified to her counsellors her intention of setting the prisoner free, she released him with her own hands. Many a step did she hesitate as she went down the stairs; and when she came to the door, she shed a full, but soft, and, as it seemed to her, a wilful and refreshing flood of tears, humbling herself for her approaching ask. When she had entered, she blushed deeply, and then .urning as pale, stood for a minute silent and without emotion. She then said, "Thy queen, Doracles, has come to show thee how kindly she can treat a great and gallant subject, who did not know her;" and with these words, and almost before she was aware, the prisoner was released, and preparing to go. He appeared surprised, but not off his guard, nor in any temper to be over grateful. Name," said he, "O queen, the conditions on which I depart, and they will be faithfully kept." Daphles moved her lips, but they spoke not. She waved her head and hand with a deadly smile, as if freeing him from all conditions, and he was turning to go, when she fell senseless on the floor. The haughty warrior raised her with more impatience than goodwill. He could guess at love in a woman; but he had but a mean opinion both of it and her sex; and the deadly struggle in the heart of Daphles did not help him to distinguish the romantic passion which had induced her to put all her past and virgin notions of love into his person, from the commonest liking that might flatter his soldierly vanity.

66

The queen, on awaking from her swoon, found herself compelled, in very justice to the intensity of a true passion, to explain how pity had brought it upon her. "I might ask it," said she, "Doracles, in return," and here she resumed something of her queen-like dignity; "but I feel that my modesty will be sufficiently saved by the name of your wife; and a substantial throne, with a return that shall nothing perplex or interfere with

thee, I do now accordingly offer thee, not as the condition of thy freedom, but as a diversion of men's eyes and thoughts from what they will think ill in me, if they find me rejected." And in getting out that hard word, her voice faltered a little, and her eyes filled with tears.

Doracles, with the best grace his lately-defeated spirit could assume, spoke in willing terms of accepting her offer. They left the prison, and his full pardon having been proclaimed, the courtiers, with feasts and entertainments, vied who should seem best to approve their mistress's choice, for so they were quick to understand it. The late captive, who was really as graceful and accomplished as a proud spirit would let him be, received and returned all their attention in princely sort, and Daphles was beginning to hope that he might turn a glad eye upon her some day, when news was brought her that he had gone from court, nobody knew whither. The next intelligence was too certain. He had passed the frontiers, and was leaguing with her enemies for another struggle.

From that day gladness, though not kindness, went out of the face of Daphles. She wrote him a letter, without a word of reproach in it, enough to bring back the remotest heart that had the least spark of sympathy; but he only answered it in a spirit which showed that he regarded the deepest love but as a wanton trifle. That letter touched her kind wits. She had had a paper drawn up, leaving him her throne in case she should die; but some of her ministers, availing themselves of her enfeebled spirit, had summoned a meeting of the nobles, at which she was to preside in the dress she wore on the day of victory, the sight of which, it was thought, with the arguments which they meant to use, would prevail upon the assembly to urge her to a revocation of the bequest. Her women dressed her whilst she was almost unconscious of what they were doing, for she had now begun to fade quickly, body as well as mind. They put on her the white garments edged with silver waves, in remembrance of the stream of Inachus, the founder of the Argive monarchy; the spear was brought out, to be stuck by the side of the throne, instead of the sceptre; and their hands prepared to put the same laurel on her head which bound its healthy white temples when

she sat or horseback and saw the prisoner go by. But at sight of its twisted and withered green, she took it in her hand, and looking about her in her chair with an air of momentary recol. lection, began picking it, and letting the leaves fall upon the floor. She went on thus, leaf after leaf, looking vacantly downwards, and when she had stripped the circle half round, she leaned her cheek against the side of her sick chair, and shutting her eyes quietly, so died.

The envoys from Argos went to the court of Calydon, where Doracles then was, and bringing him the diadem upon a black cushion, informed him at once of the death of the queen, and her nomination of him to the throne. He showed little more than a ceremonious gravity at the former news; but could ill contain his joy at the latter, and set off instantly to take possession. Among the other nobles who feasted him, was one who, having been the companion of the late king, had become a second father to his unhappy daughter. The new prince observing the melancholy which he scarcely affected to repress, and seeing him look up occasionally at a picture which had a veil over it, asked him what the picture was that seemed to disturb him so, and why it was veiled. "If it be the portrait of the late king," said Doracles, "pray think me worthy of doing honor to it, for he was a noble prince. Unveil it, pray. I insist upon it. What! am I not worthy to look upon my predecessors, Phorbas ?" And at these words he frowned impatiently. Phorbas, with a trembling hand, but not for want of courage, withdrew the black covering; and the portrait of Daphles, in all her youth and beauty, flashed upon the eyes of Doracles. It was not a melancholy face. It was drawn before misfortune had touched it, and sparkled with a blooming beauty, in which animal spirits and good-nature contended for predominance. Doracles paused and seemed struck. "The possessor of that face," said be, inquir ing, "could never have been so sorrowful as I have heard?" "Pardon me, sir," answered Phorbas, "I was as another father to her, and knew all." "It cannot be," returned the prince. The old man begged his other guests to withdraw a while, and then told Doracles how many fond and despairing things the queen had said of him, both before her wits began to fail and after.