If I Were King

If I Were King, by Justin Huntly
McCarthy

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McCarthy
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Title: If I Were King
Author: Justin Huntly McCarthy

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IF I WERE KING
BY
JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY

DEDICATION
To Her
Through Whom and For Whom
This Book was Written
"The Loveliest Lady this side of Heaven."
XXI. XII. MCMI.

If I were king--ah love, if I were king! What tributary nations would I

bring
To stoop before your sceptre and to swear
Allegiance to your lips and eyes and hair.
Beneath your feet what treasures I would fling:--
The stars should be your pearls upon a string,
The world a ruby for your finger ring,
And you should have the sun and moon to wear
If I were king.
Let these wild dreams and wilder words take wing,
Deep in the woods I hear a shepherd sing
A simple ballad to a sylvan air,
Of love that ever finds your face more fair.
I could not give you any godlier thing
If I were king.
CHAPTER I
IN THE FIRCONE TAVERN

In the dark main room of the Fircone Tavern the warm June air seemed
to have lost all its delicacy, like a degraded angel. It was sodden
through and through, as with the lees of wine; it was stained and
shamed with the smells of hams and cheeses; it was thick and heavy as
if with the breaths of all the rogues and all the vagabonds that had

haunted the hostelry from its evil dawn. Such guttering lights and
glimmering flames as lit the place--for there was a small fire on the
wide hearth in spite of the fine weather--peopled the gloom with
fantastic quivering shadows as of lean fingers that unfolded themselves
to filch, or clenched themselves to stab in the back. But its patrons
seemed to like the place well enough in spite of its miasma, and Master
Robin Turgis, the fat landlord, drowsy with his own wine and dripping
from the heat, surveyed them complacently, and wallowed as it were in
the rattle and clink of mug and can, the full-throated laughter and the
shrill chatter, crisply emphasized by oaths, which assured him of the
Fircone's popularity with its intimates. Master Robin's intelligence was
limited; his wit was simple; the processes of his mind moved easily
along the lines of least resistance. The Burgundians might be
hammering with mailed fists at the walls of Paris; the fire-new crown
of Louis the Eleventh might be falling from the royal forehead: it
mattered not a jot to dishonest Robin so long as the Fircone brimmed
with company.
There was enough company in the room on this evening to content
even his wish. It was not the kind of company that a wise man would
desire to keep, but it delighted the innkeeper, for it drank deeply and
spent freely, and in Robin's view it was of no more concern to him how
the money that changed hands was come by than it was how the
profound potations might affect the brains and stomachs of his clients.
If any officer of the law had questioned him as to his association with a
certain mysterious Brotherhood of the Cockleshells whose plunderings
and pilferings were the pride of the Court of Miracles and the fear of
citizens with strong boxes, he would have shrugged his fat shoulders
and shaken his round head and disowned all knowledge of any such
unlawful corporation. Yet his face wrinkled with smiles as his glance
rested amiably upon the bodily presences of certain illustrious members
of