?"

"Shakespeare only mentions Ophelia, and we are led to believe that
Hamlet died unmarried."

"Well," I answered, "if Saxo is right, he was married, had lots of
children, and continued the dynasty till _dato_."

"Go on! You interest me."

"He made himself very disagreeable at home with his silly talk and his
hatred of the King and the Queen. In a conversation he had with his
mother he flung away all disguise and also hurled some unpleasant and
extremely unvarnished truths full in the maternal face."

"That does not speak well for him," said Mr. de W.

"To get rid of him," I continued, warming to my subject, "the Danish
court sent him to the English court with a nice letter of introduction,
and at the same time sent a letter to the King of England, begging him
to have Hamlet killed somehow or other, but clever Hamlet stole and
read the letter and killed the messenger himself."

"That shows he was no fool," acknowledged M. de W.

"The King of England gave him a fine dinner, and I think the English
court must have opened its eyes when Hamlet pushed away the food,
saying it was '_too bad to eat_.' He told them that the bread tasted of
dead men's bones and the wine of blood, and, worst of all, that the
Queen was not a born lady. When the court asked with one voice how he
dared breathe such an insult he answered that there were three things
that proved that what he said was true."

"It would amuse me to know what the three things were," said M. de W.

"One was," I said, "that the Queen held up her dress while walking;
another, that she threw a shawl over her head; and the last, that she
picked her teeth and chewed the contents! I actually blush for the
Danes when I read the account of that dinner."

"I confess," laughed de W., "that that _was_ pretty bad. Tell me some
more."

"The courtiers hurried to examine into affairs and found that
everything that Hamlet said was true. The poor Queen was horribly
mortified, for they discovered that her papa had been a peasant."

"I suppose," said M. de W., "that the court forbade the banns after
that."

"No," I said, "Hamlet went home with his bride, and the royal Danish
court of Jutland made an enormous feast for the home-coming of the
princely couple. _This_ was the thing that Hamlet had waited for all
his life. Saxo hurries over this harrowing episode. Hamlet succeeded in
getting all the guests dead drunk, then he pulled the tapestries all
down on top of them and s