He requested the lord
chamberlain therefore to read it. His Lordship commenced at once
but the difficulties he seemed to encounter, and the fits of
stammering that seized him, roused the king's suspicion tenfold.
He called the princess.
'I trouble His Lordship too much,' he said to her: 'you can read
print well, my child - let me hear how you can read writing. Take
that paper from His Lordship's hand, and read it to me from
beginning to end, while my lord drinks a glass of my favourite
wine, and watches for your blunders.'
'Pardon me, Your Majesty,' said the lord chamberlain, with as much
of a smile as he was able to extemporize, 'but it were a thousand
pities to put the attainments of Her Royal Highness to a test
altogether too severe. Your Majesty can scarcely with justice
expect the very organs of her speech to prove capable of compassing
words so long, and to her so unintelligible.'
'I think much of my little princess and her capabilities,' returned
the king, more and more aroused. 'Pray, my lord, permit her to
try.'
'Consider, Your Majesty: the thing would be altogether without
precedent. it would be to make sport of statecraft,' said the lord
chamberlain.
'Perhaps you are right, my lord,' answered the king, with more
meaning than he intended should be manifest, while to his growing
joy he felt new life and power throbbing in heart and brain.
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