Excerpt: ...three little words: 'I amuse you!'" "Amuse me!" exclaimed Charles, thoughtfully. "Hark ye, Nell! States may marry us; they cannot make us love. Ye Gods, the humblest peasant in my realm is monarch of a heart of his own choice. Would I were such a king!" "What buxom country lass," asked Nell, sadly but wistfully, "teaches your fancy to follow the plough, my truant master?" "You forget: I too," continued Charles, "have been an outcast, like Orange Nell, seeking a crust and bed." He arose and turned away sadly to ...
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Excerpt: ...three little words: 'I amuse you!'" "Amuse me!" exclaimed Charles, thoughtfully. "Hark ye, Nell! States may marry us; they cannot make us love. Ye Gods, the humblest peasant in my realm is monarch of a heart of his own choice. Would I were such a king!" "What buxom country lass," asked Nell, sadly but wistfully, "teaches your fancy to follow the plough, my truant master?" "You forget: I too," continued Charles, "have been an outcast, like Orange Nell, seeking a crust and bed." He arose and turned away sadly to suppress his emotion. He was not the King of England now: he was a man who had suffered; he was a man among men. "Forgive me, Sire," said Nell, tenderly, as a woman only can speak, "if I recall unhappy times." 172 "Unhappy!" echoed Charles, while Fancy toyed with Recollection. "Nell, in those dark days, I learned to read the human heart. God taught me then the distinction 'twixt friend and enemy. When a misled rabble had dethroned my father, girl, and murdered him before our palace gate, and bequeathed the glorious arts and progressive sciences to religious bigots and fanatics, to trample under foot and burn-when, if a little bird sang overjoyously, they cut out his tongue for daring to be merry-in some lonely home by some stranger's hearth, a banished prince, called Charles Stuart, oft found an asylum of plenty and repose; and in your eyes, my Nell, I read the self-same, loyal, English heart." There was all the sadness of great music in his speech. Nell fell upon her knee, and kissed his hand, reverently. "My King!" she said; and her voice trembled with passionate love. He raised her tenderly and kissed her upon the lips. "My queen," he said; and his voice 173 too trembled with passionate love. "And Milton says that Paradise is lost," whispered...
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