occasion for a dispensation from your old fool at Rome."--How! thou
impious, atheistical bag of drybones, cried the old king; dost thou
profane our holy religion? Thou shalt have no daughter of mine, thou
three-legged skeleton--Go and be buried and be damned, as thou must be;
for as thou art dead, thou art past repentance: I would sooner give my
child to a baboon, who has one leg more than thou hast, than bestow her
on such a reprobate corpse--You had better give your one-legged infanta
to the baboon, said the prince, they are fitter for one another--As much
a corpse as I am, I am preferable to nobody; and who the devil would
have married your no-daughter, but a dead body! For my religion, I lived
and died in it, and it is not in my power to change it now if I
would--but for your part--a great shout interrupted this dialogue, and
the captain of the guard rushing into the royal closet, acquainted his
majesty, that the second princess, in revenge of the prince's neglect,
had given her hand to a drysalter, who was a common-council-man, and
that the city, in consideration of the match, had proclaimed them king
and queen, allowing his majesty to retain the title for his life, which
they had fixed for the term of six months; and ordering, in respect of
his royal birth, that the prince should immediately lie in state and
have a pompous funeral.

This revolution was so sudden and so universal, that all parties
approved, or were forced to seem to approve it. The old king died the
next day, as the courtiers said, for joy; the prince of Quifferiquimini
was buried in spite of his appeal to the law of nations; and the
youngest princess went distracted, and was shut up in a madhouse,
calling out day and night for a husband with three legs.