Zac's Bride by E.H. Knatchbull-Hugessen — Read

King Fridolin sat gloomily in the ancient halls of his race. A mighty race, forsooth, had they been for many a long year, and a mighty king was Fridolin. I shall not tell you the precise situation of his kingdom, for it is only by avoiding particular descriptions that we historians escape a variety of impertinent and troublesome questions. Suffice it to say that the monarch ruled over a territory of goodly size, containing mountains, forests, houses, vineyards, cornfields, and everything else which the neighbourhood of a mighty river could supply. For a river, mighty, indeed, in size and reputation, flowed through his kingdom, and was the principal glory of his land. The monarch had succeeded to the throne at an early age, and had reigned for long years over his people. They, poor creatures, had apparently only been created in order to minister to his comfort.

Ground down by oppressive taxation, their spirits broken, their bodies subject to the will of their despotic master, their homes held only at his pleasure, and scarcely daring to call their very thoughts their own, they dragged on such a miserable existence as was permitted to them, without a hope or an idea that their condition could ever be improved by any effort of their own. But with him, their imperious lord, the case was surely different. He, one would have imagined, had everything to make him happy. Lands, vassals, money -- what would he more? And yet King Fridolin sat gloomily in his ancient halls.