A House of Pomegranates

A House of Pomegranates

The Project Gutenberg EBook of A House of Pomegranates, by Oscar
Wilde (#8 in our series by Oscar Wilde)
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Title: A House of Pomegranates
Author: Oscar Wilde
Release Date: April, 1997 [EBook #873] [This file was first posted on
April 8, 1997] [Most recently updated: September 25, 2002]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A HOUSE
OF POMEGRANATES ***

Transcribed from the 1915 Methuen and Co. edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

A HOUSE OF POMEGRANATES

Contents:
The Young King The Birthday of the Infanta The Fisherman and his
Soul The Star-child

THE YOUNG KING

[TO MARGARET LADY BROOKE--THE RANEE OF SARAWAK]
It was the night before the day fixed for his coronation, and the young
King was sitting alone in his beautiful chamber. His courtiers had all
taken their leave of him, bowing their heads to the ground, according to
the ceremonious usage of the day, and had retired to the Great Hall of
the Palace, to receive a few last lessons from the Professor of Etiquette;
there being some of them who had still quite natural manners, which in
a courtier is, I need hardly say, a very grave offence.
The lad--for he was only a lad, being but sixteen years of age--was not
sorry at their departure, and had flung himself back with a deep sigh of
relief on the soft cushions of his embroidered couch, lying there,
wild-eyed and open-mouthed, like a brown woodland Faun, or some
young animal of the forest newly snared by the hunters.
And, indeed, it was the hunters who had found him, coming upon him
almost by chance as, bare-limbed and pipe in hand, he was following
the flock of the poor goatherd who had brought him up, and whose son
he had always fancied himself to be. The child of the old King's only
daughter by a secret marriage with one much beneath her in station--a

stranger, some said, who, by the wonderful magic of his lute-playing,
had made the young Princess love him; while others spoke of an artist
from Rimini, to whom the Princess had shown much, perhaps too much
honour, and who had suddenly disappeared from the city, leaving his
work in the Cathedral unfinished--he had been, when but a week old,
stolen away from his mother's side, as she slept, and given into the
charge of a common peasant and his wife, who were without children
of their own, and lived in a remote part of the forest, more than a day's
ride from the town. Grief, or the plague, as the court physician stated,
or, as some suggested, a swift Italian poison administered in a cup of
spiced wine, slew, within an hour of her wakening, the white girl who
had given him birth, and as the trusty messenger who bare the child
across his saddle-bow stooped from his weary horse and knocked at the
rude door of the goatherd's hut, the body of the Princess was being
lowered into an open grave that had been dug in a deserted churchyard,
beyond the city gates, a grave where it was said that another body was
also lying, that of a young man of marvellous and foreign beauty,
whose hands were tied behind him with a knotted cord, and whose
breast was stabbed with many red wounds.
Such, at least, was the story that men whispered to each other. Certain
it was that the old King, when on his deathbed, whether moved by
remorse for his great sin, or merely desiring that the kingdom should
not pass away from his line, had had the lad sent for, and, in the
presence of the Council, had acknowledged him as his heir.
And it seems that from the very first moment of his recognition he had
shown signs of that strange passion for beauty that was destined to