All attempts to make the king serviceable to the troop had failed.
He had stubbornly refused to act; moreover, he was always trying to
escape. He had been thrust into an unwatched kitchen, the first day of
his return; he not only came forth empty-handed, but tried to rouse
the housemates. He was sent out with a tinker to help him at his work;
he would not work; moreover, he threatened the tinker with his own
soldering-iron; and finally both Hugo and the tinker found their hands
full with the mere matter of keeping him from getting away. He
delivered the thunders of his royalty upon the heads of all who
hampered his liberties or tried to force him to service. He was sent
out, in Hugo's charge, in company with a slatternly woman and a
diseased baby, to beg; but the result was not encouraging- he declined
to plead for the mendicants, or be a party to their cause in any way.
Thus several days went by; and the miseries of this tramping life,
and the weariness and sordidness and meanness and vulgarity of it,
became gradually and steadily so intolerable to the captive that he
began at last to feel that his release from the hermit's knife must
prove only a temporary respite from death, at best.
But at night, in his dreams, these things were forgotten, and he
was on his throne, and master again. This, of course, intensified
the sufferings of the awakening- so the mortifications of each
succeeding morning of the few that passed between his return to
bondage and the combat with Hugo, grew bitterer, and harder and harder
to bear.
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