About fifteen minutes elapsed before some zealous courtier brought the poem in the Examiner to the attention of the Regent, who thereupon, forgetting the presence of Mrs. FitzHerbert, who had allowed him to overtake her a few minutes previous, swore with an ease and variety that would have been a credit to the proverbial Billingsgate seller of fish. As the rage of Wales was not of the repressed order, the voice of royalty raised high in anger drew about him a crowd of courtiers who had been eagerly expecting such an outbreak all the evening.
"Sir Percival!" cried the Regent, catching sight of the baronet in a distant corner where Farrell and he were enjoying the tumult consequent on the culmination of their plot. "Have you seen this devilish set of verses?"
"I regret to say I have, your Highness," responded the baronet both shocked and grieved.
"It is infamous!" stormed Wales. "Gad's life! it is intolerable. I devote my best efforts to my country's service only to be foully lampooned in the public Press. Why, curse me--!"
"Your Highness, calm yourself, I beg of you," said Mrs. FitzHerbert, soothingly, but the Prince was not to be so easily restrained.
"Calm, indeed?" he shouted. "Calm, when such damnable insults are written and printed? Not I, madame."
"Rise superior to this malicious attack," persisted the beauty, little pleased that her influence should fail so publicly. "Remember your greatness, sir."
"A lion may be stung into anger by a gadfly, madame," retorted Wales, growing even more furious. "Brummell, have you read this infernal poem?"
"Not I, your Highness," replied the Beau, who, accompanied by Moore, had forsaken the card-table at the first outburst of royal wrath.
"Then do so now," commanded the enraged Regent, thrusting the paper into his hands.