THE KING’S BIRTHDAY.

The King began to look very old and worn and wan. It was a weakness of this great monarch that he would not know of this approach of age and decay. Never did he look in the polished shells that served as mirrors amongst the Sheviri, nor gaze down into the waters of the lake by daylight. He felt that he had yet much to do. Life had few, if any, pleasures for him; but it abounded in duties. That man is very strong and powerful who has no more hope for himself: who looks not to be loved any more; to be admired any more; to have any more honour or dignity; and who cares not for gratitude; but whose sole thought is for others, and who only lives on for them.

This was the state of Realmah. He ever feared that the civilization he had created with such great rapidity, would die away with equal rapidity after his death. Fearing this, even he, wise as he was, redoubled his efforts at a time when he ought, in great measure, to have relaxed them; and he would not know that he was fading away.

Quick to discern what was in their monarch’s mind, the courtiers were prone to talk before him of his never-failing youth and vigour; and had the effrontery to dwell upon this welcome theme, even when they saw the pale grey King, in his grand heavy robes, wearily make his way to a council, or drag himself along in some state ceremony.

Do what you will, you never can get to the end of the odd folly of mankind. It is a sea that cannot be sounded. The witty Erasmus may write a book[36] about it, but it defies the satire of the keenest satirist, and is beyond the imagination of the most imaginative man. Here was a prince who had done great things, and was inaccessible to any flattery about them. Indeed, he could not bear to hear them alluded to. So impatient was he in this respect, that he had cut short an ambassador from a neighbouring people, who commenced an oration by a long and laudatory description of the King’s great doings. “Could we not, my Lord Ambassador,” said Realmah, “take all this for granted, and proceed at once to the business in hand?”

Footnote 36:

The celebrated work, “Moriæ Encomium.”

The same man, however, was open to gross flattery upon the subject of his youthfulness and continued vigour; and did not object to be told, though he knew it to be false, at each recurring birthday, that the King possessed a charmed life, and that the past year seemed to have added to his vigour, rather than to have taken from it.

The art of sculpture is one which makes its appearance at the earliest periods of civilization; and the Sheviri were already considerable adepts in this art. As was to be expected, the representation of their monarch was a favourite subject with the artists of Abibah. On the Bridge of Leopards, an elegant little wooden bridge which connected two portions of the eastern part of the city, there were two statues of the King. The second one had been taken from life, seventeen years after the first. The costumes of the statues were different--one being the garb of a warrior, the other that of a king; but the second statue was even more juvenile-looking, if anything, than the first. And both of them represented a very young man, a kind of Apollo, who would by no means halt in his gait.

There was not a person, man or woman, in Abibah, who did not know the foible of the great King; and probably it endeared him to them, for a man of great merit ought to have many foibles, if he would be much loved.

There is generally something very interesting in premature decay, and that because of the strange contrast it mostly affords. It is seldom, or ever, total. There has been either great physical or great mental overwork; and part of the vital energies is deadened or destroyed, while the other part remains intact. Upon this other part new strain is put; and gallantly for a time, if backed by a great soul, this other part answers to the strain put upon it. But each day the enemy is stronger, and the resisting power is weaker.

There was also in Realmah a quality which is to be noticed in the greatest men, but it is one which tells with great severity upon the vital powers. There was an almost infinite pitifulness[37] in Realmah. The private and the public troubles of his subjects became his own, and there was not a disease or a disaster amongst his numerous subjects that did not weigh upon the heart, and tax the energies, of the great and loving King.

Footnote 37:

It is a strange thing, by the way, that that word “pitiful” should have been so corrupted, and that the man whose heart is full of pity should have come to be looked upon as a small and poor kind of man.

His career, which we have but in a small degree narrated, shows that he possessed that first quality needful for a ruler--justice. But if there was any exception to this rule, any weakness of favouritism to be observed in him, it was in a leaning which he always showed to the tribe of the fishermen. Never was it known that the poorest fisherman was kept long waiting for an audience with Realmah. That tribe never suspected that the King’s especial regard for them proceeded from his never-dying love for the Ainah. They thought that it was their own especial services to him on the night of the great revolution that endeared them to him. And, perhaps, his leaning to the fishermen’s tribe was, after all, a stroke of policy (at any rate he pretended to himself that it was so), for it is a grand thing for any person in power to have any man, or body of men, upon whose affection he can profoundly rely, and whom he has not to study to win upon any particular occasion of difficulty. Even the great Napoleon, as hard a man as ever lived, could speak with loving tenderness of those who were “devoted to my person;” and it is one of the few blessings that attend great men, that they are sure to elicit a large amount of personal affection amongst those who come into close contact with them.

The forty-seventh birthday of the King approached, and was to be celebrated throughout the city with great rejoicings. It was customary, on that anniversary, for the King to receive all the official persons connected with his government, both of the city of Abibah and of the neighbouring towns.

It had been doubtful, on account of the wounds which the King had received on the occasion of the mock fight, whether he would be well enough to undertake this ceremony. But, notwithstanding those wounds were still unhealed, he did so, though on this day it was a very long reception, which lasted indeed for five hours. Never was the King more gracious--never did he give more ample encouragement to those of his high officers who had pleased him by the diligent discharge of their duties, and who had loyally promoted his great designs; but, at the end of the reception, he fainted away in the arms of his attendants. Still this warning had no effect in rendering the King more prudent; and, with unabated vigour, he prepared to undertake in a few days’ time a great ceremony, the particulars of which will be narrated in the following chapter.