He gave a short cry, threw out an arm feebly; wavered, toppled, crumpled like a thing without bone, and fell back into his chair.
"My God!" muttered the Prime Minister. "Oh, great Heaven!"
Some one, more nimble of wit than the rest, dashed out of the room to seek aid. All the others, impressed with a true sense of incompetence, stood looking at their fallen King. Not one of them knew how to handle him, whether it were best to lay him down or leave him alone. First aid—even to their sovereign lord—had formed no part in the education of these his counselors.
The Prime Minister did the one thing which he knew to be correct—and which could not possibly do harm; he felt the King's heart. But nobody for a moment supposed him to be dead; unconscious though he lay, his heavy breathings could be seen and heard.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE VOICE OF THANKSGIVING
I
For three whole weeks thereafter—if the papers were to be believed—the entire nation hung upon the bulletins which were issued hourly from the royal palace. The King's illness gave the finishing touch to his popularity; devotion to affairs of State had brought on brain-fever, and the more desperate the symptoms of the illness could be made to appear, the more sublime became the moral character of its august victim, and the more deeply-rooted the affection of his people.
Professional vanity had also to be flattered; and during those fierce fluctuations of hope and despair, Jingalo's topmost place in the world of medical science became vindicated to the meanest intelligence. If by a scientific miracle the King's life was to be saved, Jingalese doctoring, and no other doctoring in the world would do it.