‘I’ll cut your throat.’
‘I’ll blow your brains out.’
‘I’ll knock your head off.’
‘I’ll send a friend to you in the morning.’
‘I’ll send a bullet into you in the afternoon.’
‘We’ll meet again,’ says Giglio, shaking his fist in Bulbo’s face; and seizing up the warming-pan, he kissed it, because, forsooth, Betsinda had carried it, and rushed downstairs. What should he see on the landing but His Majesty talking to Betsinda, whom he called by all sorts of fond names. His Majesty had heard a row in the building, so he stated, and smelling something burning, had come out to see what the matter was.
‘It’s the young gentlemen smoking, perhaps, sir,’ says Betsinda.
‘Charming chambermaid,’ says the King (like all the rest of them), ‘never mind the young men! Turn thy eyes on a middle-aged autocrat, who has been considered not ill-looking in his time.’
‘Oh, sir! what will Her Majesty say?’ cries Betsinda.
‘Her Majesty!’ laughs the monarch. ‘Her Majesty be hanged. Am I not Autocrat of Paflagonia? Have I not blocks, ropes, axes, hangmen—ha? Runs not a river by my palace wall? Have I not sacks to sew up wives withal? Say but the word, that thou wilt be mine own,—your mistress straightway in a sack is sewn, and thou the sharer of my heart and throne.’