THE EXECUTION.
In an instant all was confusion.Everybody sprang to their feet - ladies shrieked in chorus, gentlemen swore and drew their swords, and looked to see if they might not expect a whole army to drop from the sky upon them, as they stood.No other battalion, however, followed this forlorn hope; and seeing it, the gentlemen took heart of grace and closed around the unceremonious intruder.The queen had sprung from her royal seat, and stood with her bright lips parted, and her brighter eyes dilating in speechless wonder.The bench, with the judge at their head, had followed her example, and stood staring with all their might, looking, truth to tell, as much startled by the sudden apparition as the fair sex.The said fair sex were still firing off little volleys of screams in chorus, and clinging desperately to their cavaliers; and everything, in a word, was in most admired disorder.
Tam O'Shanter's cry, "Weel done, Cutty sark!" could not have produced half such a commotion among his "hellish legion" as the emphatic debut of Sir Norman Kingsley among these human revelers.
The only one who seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise was the prisoner, who was quietly and quickly making off, when the malevolent and irrepressible dwarf espied him, and the one shock acting as a counter-irritant to the other, he bounced fleetly over the table, and grabbed him in his crab-like claws.
This brisk and laudable instance of self-command had a wonderful and inspiriting effect on the rest; and as he replaced the pale and palsied prisoner in his former position, giving him a vindictive shake and vicious kick with his royal boots as he did so, everybody began to feel themselves again.The ladies stopped screaming, the gentlemen ceased swearing, and more than one exclamation of astonishment followed the cries of terror.
"Sir Norman Kingsley! Sir Norman Kingsley!" rang from lip to lip of those who recognized him; and all drew closer, and looked at him as if they really could not make up their mind to believe their eyes.As for Sir Norman himself, that gentleman was destined literally, if not metaphorically, to fall on his legs that night, and had alighted on the crimson velvet-carpet, cat-like, on his feet.In reference to his feelings - his first was one of frantic disapproval of going down; his second, one of intense astonishment of finding himself there with unbroken bones; his third, a disagreeable conviction that he had about put his foot in it, and was in an excessively bad fix; and last, but not least, a firm and rooted determination to make the beet of a bad bargain, and never say die.
His first act was to take off his plumed hat, and make a profound obeisance to her majesty the queen, who was altogether too much surprised to make the return politeness demanded, and merely stared at him with her great, beautiful, brilliant eyes, as if she would never have done.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" said Sir Norman, turning gracefully to the company; "I beg ten thousand pardons for this unwarrantable intrusion, and promise you, upon my honor, never to do it again.
I beg to assure you that my coming here was altogether involuntary on my part, and forced by circumstances over which Ihad no control; and I entreat you will not mind me in the least, but go on with the proceeding, just as you did before.Should you feel my presence here any restraint, I am quite ready and willing to take my departure at any moment; and as I before insinuated, will promise, on the honor of a gentleman and a knight, never again to take the liberty of tumbling through the ceiling down on your heads."This reference to the ceiling seemed to explain the whole mystery; and everybody looked up at the corner whence he came from, and saw the flag that had been removed.As to his speech, everybody had listened to it with the greatest of attention; and sundry of the ladies, convinced by this time that he was flesh and blood, and no ghost, favored the handsome young knight with divers glances, not at all displeased or unadmiring.The queen sank back into her seat, keeping him still transfixed with her darkly-splendid eyes; and whether she admired or otherwise, no one could tell from her still, calm face.The prince consort's feelings - for such there could be no doubt he was - were involved in no such mystery; and he broke out into a hyena-like scream of laughter, as he recognized, upon a second look, his young friend of the Golden Crown.
"So you have come, have you?" he cried, thrusting his unlovely visage over the table, till it almost touched sir Norman's."You have come, have you, after all I said?""Yes, sir I have come!" said Sir Norman, with a polite bow.
"Perhaps you don't know me, my dear young sir - your little friend, you know, of the Golden Crown.""Oh, I perfectly recognize you! My little friend," said Sir Norman, with bland suavity, and unconsciously quoting Leoline, "once seen in not easy to be-forgotten."Upon this, his highness net up such another screech of mirth that it quite woke an echo through the room; and all Sir Norman's friends looked grave; for when his highness laughed, it was a very bad sign.
"My little friend will hurt himself," remarked Sir Norman, with an air of solicitude, "if he indulges in his exuberant and gleeful spirits to such an extent.Let me recommend you, as a well-wisher, to sit down and compose yourself."Instead of complying, however, the prince, who seemed blessed with a lively sense of the ludicrous, wan so struck with the extreme funniness of the young man's speech, that he relaxed into another paroxysm of levity, shriller and more unearthly, if possible, than any preceding one, and which left him so exhausted, that he was forced to sink into his chair and into silence through sheer fatigue.Seizing this, the first opportunity, Miranda, with a glance of displeased dignity st Caliban, immediately struck in:
