At these words Euphemia and Araminta, who had listened with awe-struck countenances and beating hearts to the extraordinary remarks of the king, gave utterance to wild shrieks, and fell fainting upon the doorway, from which they were speedily dragged by the king's orders, and hurried away, with their unhappy father, to the dungeons of the palace.
Having thus got rid of his host and hostess, Famcram allowed himself to calm down gradually, and, entering the ball-room, permitted those to dance who wished to do so, whilst he himself proceeded without delay to the supper-room, and made himself as comfortable as possible. He then directed all the plate and valuables of the luckless Binks to be packed up and taken to the palace; and, having placed a guard over the villa, which he declared should in future be a royal residence, he departed, with the satisfactory feeling of having made a good night's work of it.
When news of what had been done reached Chinks, the soul of the Lord Chamberlain was greatly exercised thereat. He did not for a moment imagine that Binks or his daughters had been guilty of the crime imputed to them by their royal master; but in the acts of the latter he discerned a steady determination to possess himself of the wealth of his richest subjects, and to reign more absolutely and despotically than his predecessors.
How to escape the fate of Binks was a problem by no means easy of solution. He was blessed with three daughters, Asphalia, Bettina, and Paraphernalia, so much alike that they could not be known apart, and so beautiful that nobody could see them without immediately becoming devoted to them. In these damsels Chinks placed his hopes, and could not but believe that the king, however hardly he had dealt with his Prime Minister, would not be insensible to the charms of his Lord Chamberlain's daughters. Still, he received with some fear and trembling the notice which Famcram shortly sent him, that he would visit him at his country house in the following week.
As the selection of a ball had not turned out well in the case of Binks, the Chinks family resolved upon another sort of entertainment, and at vast expense hired a celebrated conjuror to perform before the sovereign and his court.
The preparations were great—the company numerous—the weather all that could be desired, and the monarch, with his attendant courtiers, arrived in due time at the house, and was ushered into the spacious hall, where everything had been arranged for his reception. The three daughters of the house, dressed exactly alike, were there to receive him; but not a flower was to be seen about any of them, so that the fatal error of the Prime Minister's children might be avoided. They were dressed simply, and reverently knelt before the king as they raised their voices to sing (in tones as true as they were sweet) an ode which their father had himself composed in honour of his sovereign's visit.
Scarcely, however, had they finished the first verse, when the little tyrant roared out at the top of his voice—
"They sing out of tune! they sing out of tune! A royal ear is never deceived! He has made them do it because he knows I cannot bear a false note. Seize him, guards! away with him and his shabbily-dressed girls!"
Chinks stepped forward to explain matters in his most courtly fashion, when the king brought down his sceptre upon his head with such a "thwack," that you might have heard it at the other end of the hall, and, though his wig, which was particularly large, partially saved him, he dropped senseless upon the floor, whilst his daughters broke into shrieks of despair which were really out of tune, and were painful indeed to hear.
Famcram stopped his ears, and howled loudly for his guard, and before many minutes had passed, the Lord Chamberlain and his daughters were on their way to the same dungeons whither Binks and his girls had preceded them, and the king was occupied in selecting everything in the house which appeared to be most costly and beautiful, and directing that it should be forthwith sent to his palace.