Israel Potter by Herman Melville
page 43 of 250 (17%)
page 43 of 250 (17%)
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private plants and walks of the park.
It was here, to one of his near country retreats, that, coming from perplexities of state--leaving far behind him the dingy old bricks of St. James--George the Third was wont to walk up and down beneath the long arbors formed by the interlockings of lofty trees. More than once, raking the gravel, Israel through intervening foliage would catch peeps in some private but parallel walk, of that lonely figure, not more shadowy with overhanging leaves than with the shade of royal meditations. Unauthorized and abhorrent thoughts will sometimes invade the best human heart. Seeing the monarch unguarded before him; remembering that the war was imputed more to the self-will of the King than to the willingness of parliament or the nation; and calling to mind all his own sufferings growing out of that war, with all the calamities of his country; dim impulses, such as those to which the regicide Ravaillae yielded, would shoot balefully across the soul of the exile. But thrusting Satan behind him, Israel vanquished all such temptations. Nor did these ever more disturb him, after his one chance conversation with the monarch. As he was one day gravelling a little by-walk, wrapped in thought, the King turning a clump of bushes, suddenly brushed Israel's person. Immediately Israel touched his hat--but did not remove it--bowed, and was retiring; when something in his air arrested the King's attention. "You ain't an Englishman,--no Englishman--no, no." |
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