laboured smiles of those who _are_ 'spoken to ';--the melancholy
efforts at gaiety--the dread of trespassing on tabooed subjects--these
things tend to make all but the most independent and unfettered minds
shrink from such an ordeal as the 'honour' of dining with kings. It
must, however, be conceded that the kings themselves are fully aware of
the tediousness of their dinner parties, and would lighten the boredom
if they could; but etiquette forbids. The particular monarch whose
humours are the subject of this 'plain unvarnished' history would have
liked nothing better than to be allowed to dine in simplicity and peace
without his conversation being noted, and without having a flunkey at
hand to watch every morsel of food go into his mouth. He would have
liked to eat freely, talk freely, and conduct himself generally with
the ease of a private gentleman.

All this being denied to him, he hated the dinner-hour as ardently as
he hated receiving illuminated addresses, and the freedom of cities.
Yet all things costly and beautiful were combined to make his royal
table a picture which would have pleased the eyes and taste of a
Marguerite de Valois. On the evening of the day on which he had
determined, as he had said to himself, to 'begin to reign,' it looked
more than usually attractive. Some trifling chance had made the floral
decorations more tasteful--some amiable humour of the providence which
rules daily events, had ordained that two or three of the prettiest
Court ladies should be present;--Prince Humphry and his two brothers,
Rupert and Cyprian, were at table,--and though conversation was slow
and scant, the picturesqueness of the scene was not destroyed by
silence. The apartment which was used as a private dining-room when
their Majesties had no guests save the members of their own household,
was in itself a gem of art and architecture,--it had been designed and
painted from floor to ceiling by one of the most famous of the dead and