The King and the Beggar
Once upon a time there lived a king without a queen.
For you see, the king had lost his
wife to a plague that was ravishing his kingdom.
This pestilence was so virulent that a
person who became sick in the morning would...
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The King and the Beggar
Once upon a time there lived a king without a queen.
For you see, the king had lost his
wife to a plague that was ravishing his kingdom.
This pestilence was so virulent that a
person who became sick in the morning would become, even before the sun sank beyond
the distant hills, a mere memory.
It was as a memory, then, that the king cherished his
beloved wife, entombed within his castle.
Yet, there was no end, it seemed, to the plague,
as it continued, year after year.
It was in this time, when the corpse fires were burning in
the night, that the king received a stranger to the court.
Upon hearing that the visitor had
the sign of the plague upon him-boils and a sickly pallor, the king refused to see him and
ordered his chamberlains to escort the man to the ends of his kingdom.
But, as the sickness
had become so advanced in his kingdom and men are apt to put themselves first in dire
times, the chamberlains refused to even approach the visi
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