The King of England brought
seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was
easily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen. But
that is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dull
market, I don't care what the property is, you are going to make
a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it. If
the earl had had wit enough to--
However, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies up
on his account. Let him go, for the present; I took his number,
so to speak.
The slave-dealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that long
chain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession. We
took up our line of march and passed out of Cambenet at noon;
and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the King
of England and his chief minister, marching manacled and fettered
and yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle men
and women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely,
and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark.
Dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a king
than there is about a tramp, after all. He is just a cheap and
hollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king. But reveal
his quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to look
at him. I reckon we are all fools.
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