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"You! At your age! No! You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you

must be six or seven hundred ssssssssss

years old, at the very least." ssssssssss

"Trouble has done it,

Bilgewater, trouble has done ssssssssss

it; trouble has brung these ssssssssss

gray hairs and this premature ssssssssss

balditude. Yes, gentlemen, ssssssssss

you see before you, in blue ssssssssss

jeans and misery, the wan- ssssssssss

derin', exiled, trampled-on and ssssssssss

sufferin' rightful King of ssssssssss

France." ssssssssss

Well, he cried and took on

so, that me and Jim didn't ssssssssss

know hardly what to do, we ssssssssss

was so sorry -- and so glad and ssssssssss

proud we'd got him with us, ssssssssss

too. So we set in, like we done ssssssssss

before with the duke, and tried ssssssssss

to comfort him. But he said ssssssssss

it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any

good; though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if

people treated him according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to

him, and always called him "Your Majesty," and waited on him first at meals,

and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me set to

majestying him, and doing this and that and t'other for him, and standing up till

he told us we might set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got

cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kind of soured on him, and didn't look a

bit satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly

towards him, and said the duke's great-grandfather and all the other Dukes of

Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father and was allowed to come to

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