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and plunder: and, thus directed, they slew, without discrimination, every person they met. He entered the palace, and penetrated without ceremony into the most retired apartments, where he found the queen overwhelmed with sorrow and despair. He beheld her distresses unmoved, and by his ferocious manner and brutal threats, added terror to the pangs she felt before. Thus, too much intimidated to answer a word, this monster of a king, supposed her silence to proceed from sullenness and ill humour; he seized her rudely by the hair, which the negligence of grief had suffered to fall loosely on her shoulders, and then dragging her from the bed on which she lay, he through her across his shoulders, and carried her away without remorse; he then mounted with her on his steed, and rode off. She besought him, with tears and supplications, to have pity on her sufferings; but he mocked her cries, and said to her, "Weep on; your complaints are a source of pleasure and deversion to me."
He carried her towards his own capital, and, during the time that he was on the road, he took the most dreadful oaths that he would hang her as soon as he reached it; but he was soon informed, on his arrival, that the queen was pregnant.
When the wicked king knew this, a
