page. This house
equipage consisted of a large chair, resting on castors, which was
moved by men in the place of horses, and to which they had, with artful
flattery, given the form of a triumphal car of the old victorious Roman
Caesars, in order to afford the king, as he rolled through the halls,
the pleasant illusion that he was holding a triumphal procession, and
that it was not the burden of his heavy limbs which fastened him to
his imperial car. King Henry gave ready credence to the flattery of his
truckle-chair and his courtiers, and as he rolled along in it through
the saloons glittering with gold, and through halls adorned with
Venetian mirrors, which reflected his form a thousandfold, he liked
to lull himself into the dream of being a triumphing hero, and wholly
forgot that it was not his deeds, but his fat, that had helped him to
his triumphal car.

For that monstrous mass which filled up the colossal chair, that
mountain of purple-clad flesh, that clumsy, almost shapeless mass, that
was Henry the Eighth, king of merry England. But thae mass had a head--a
head full of dark and wrathful thoughts, a heart full of bloodthirsty
and cruel lusts. The colossal body was indeed, by its physical weight,
fastened to the chair. Yet his mind never rested, but he hovered, with
the talons and flashing eye of the bird of prey, over his people, ever
ready to pounce upon some innocent dove, to drink her blood, and tear
out her heart, that he might lay it, all palpitating, as an offering on
the altar of his sanguinary god.

The king's sedan now stopped, and Catharine hastened forward with
smiling face, to assist her royal husband in alighting.

Henry greeted her with a gracious nod, and rejected the proffered aid of
the attendant pages.

"Away," said he, "away! My Catharine alone shall extend me her hand, and
give me a welcome to the bridal chamber. Go, we feel to-day as young and
strong as in our best and happiest days, and the young queen shall see
that it is no decrepit graybeard, tottering with age, who woos her, but
a strong man rejuvenated by love. Think not, Kate, that I use my car
because of weakness. No, it was only my longing for you which made me
wish to be with you the sooner."

He kissed her with a smile, and, lightly leaning on her arm, alighted
from his car.

"Away with the equipage, and with all of you!" said he. "We wish to be
alone with this beautiful young wife, whom the lord bishops have to-day
made ou