“Fifty! So is mine! And how rich is he? ”
But it turned out they were just the same in that point; and though he cudgelled his brains to find out some difference, there seemed to be none; their kingdoms were exactly the same size, with exactly the same number of people in them, and their ancestors had been just as brave and glorious in peace or war. In fact, they were as like as two peas in a pod.
All this time the horses were champing their bits and pawing the ground, as if they would like to jump over each other’s heads; and I daresay the Kings were getting impatient too, though they were much too dignified to say anything. And there they might have stayed till doomsday, but that King Godfrey’s coachman hit on a fine idea. He suggested that perhaps one of them was a better King than the other; what were his master’s virtues, would the other coachman kindly tell him?
The other coachman had his answer all ready, in poetry too, and this it was:
“Rough to the rough, my mighty King the mild with mildness sways,
Masters the good by goodness, and the bad with badness pays:
Give place, give place, O driver! such are this monarch’s ways!”
“H’m,” said King Godfrey’s driver, “tit for tat is all very well, but I shouldn’t call it virtue to pay out a bad man in his own coin.”
“Oh, well,” says the other in a huff, “you can call it vice if you like; and I should be very glad to hear all your King’s virtues, if you laugh at mine!”
“Certainly,” said King Godfrey’s coachman; and, not to be beaten, he did his answer into poetry, like the other: