THE DARK CHAMBER
43
The greater beggar appears like the King to the eyes of the lesser beggar. O fool, the man that has come out to-day attired in crimson and gold to beg from you—it is him whom you are trumpeting as your King! . . . Ah, there comes my mad friend! Oh come, my brothers! we cannot spend the day in idle wrangling and prating—let us now have some mad frolic, some wild enjoyment!
Enter the Mad Friend, who sings
Do you smile, my friends? Do you laugh, my brothers? I roam in search of the golden stag! Ah yes, the fleet-foot vision that ever eludes me!
Oh, he fits and glimpses like a flash and then is gone, the untamed rover of the wilds! Approach him and he is afar in a trice, leaving a cloud of haze and dust before thy eyes!
