Read "For Love of the King" by Oscar Wilde online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
_The bed-chamber of the King_ -- _vast and shadowy_. _On heaped-up cushions and covers of yellow and blue_, _under a pearl-sewn creamy velvet baldaquin_, _embroidered with peacocks_, _lies_ MENG BENG, _mortally stricken_; _his face bears the ashen pallor that only dark skins know_. _The ministers_, _the servants_, _the courtiers_, _the countless motley gathering of an Eastern Court are scattered in anxious groups_, _watching_, _waiting_, _murmuring_. _Only the space near the couch is clear_. _Without_, _the dawn breaks over the sea_, _and_, _stealing through the opening_, _makes the great chamber flush till it looks like porphyry_.
_The tolling of a deep gong and the voices of a myriad birds invade the throbbing silence of the Palace_.