their lips angrily muttered in his ear, "Little knave, peace! be
quiet! hold your tongue! It is the king!"

They were about to drag him out of the august atmosphere as if he
had been some venomous, dangerous beast come there to slay, but
the voice he had heard speak of the stove said, in kind accents,
"Poor little child! he is very young. Let him go: let him speak to
me."

The word of a king is law to his courtiers: so, sorely against
their wish, the angry and astonished chamberlains let August slide
out of their grasp, and he stood there in his little rough
sheepskin coat and his thick, mud-covered boots, with his curling
hair all in a tangle, in the midst of the most beautiful chamber
he had ever dreamed of, and in the presence of a young man with a
beautiful dark face, and eyes full of dreams and fire; and the
young man said to him:--

"My child, how came you here, hidden in this stove? Be not afraid:
tell me the truth. I am the king."

August, in an instinct of homage, cast his great battered black
hat with the tarnished gold tassels down on the floor of the room,
and folded his little brown hands in supplication. He was too
intensely in earnest to be in any way abashed; he was too lifted
out of himself by his love for Hirschvogel to be conscious of any
awe before any earthly majesty. He was only so glad--so glad it
was the king. Kings were always kind; so the Tyrolese think, who
love their lords.