THE EPILOGUE.
Four years afterwards, a solitary English traveller, named Chalton, was standing in the centre of a wide district, near to where the last-mentioned guests had spent a summer night in 1839. He was apparently in search of some locality, and two chiefs were closely watching him. A couple of Wesleyan natives were not far off. They were assisting him in making a survey for a road.
“There used to be a hut on that hill in the distance,” said he to one of the chiefs.
“King Thierry’s hut,” answered both the chiefs at once.
“True,” rejoined the inquirer; “why is it no longer there?”
“Zealanders’ gods are not sleeping,” replied one of the chiefs. “Thierry and his priests were cruel to his people. The island spirits told us, in our dreams, to punish him. We burned the hut down last moon.”
“And Thierry and his wife?” asked the astounded engineer.
“The good lady perished in the flames. The people from the other side of the island saved King Thierry.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Chalton, partly relieved; “what are they going to do with him?”
“Oh, nothing!” cried the chiefs, somewhat eagerly.
“The Government will not let the people keep him a captive.”
“The Government can’t get him,” said one of the chiefs.
“And the tribe haven’t got him,” said the other.
“Why, what have they done to him?”
“Hem!” growled somewhat unctuously the elder chief of the two, “they have eaten him!”
Such is said to have been really the fate of the little prisoner who used to mend the garments of M. de Bohun in the prison of Orléans; of the costumier of the court masquerades at the Congress of Vienna; and of the wandering adventurer in distant seas, where he could find no one who would either acknowledge his fiats or accept his fashions. He was unable to establish himself in the world either as monarch of men or as makers of their habits.
And having thus spoken of a mock king, let us consider now our English liege ladies at their respective toilets.