Page:The Prisoner of Zenda.djvu/78

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62
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA.

"You'd look pale if you lived as he did," was the highly disrespectful retort.

"He's a bigger man than I thought," said another.

"So he had a good jaw under that beard after all," commented a third.

"The pictures of him aren't handsome enough," declared a pretty girl, taking great care that I should hear. No doubt it was mere flattery.

But in spite of these signs of approval and interest the mass of the people received me in silence and with sullen looks, and my dear brother's portrait ornamented most of the windows—which was an ironical sort of greeting to the king. I was quite glad that he had been spared the unpleasant sight. He was a man of quick temper, and perhaps he would not have taken it so placidly as I did.

At last we were at the cathedral. Its great gray front, embellished with hundreds of statues and boasting a pair of the finest oak doors in Europe rose for the first time before me, and the sudden sense of my audacity almost overcame me. Every-