FLASHES OF ROYAL REPARTEE.

While there is no royal road to cleverness, the real road, such as it is, frequently is traveled by royal feet. In these days the functions of royalty are not of a nature that is likely to develop merry dispositions.

Rich in sly humor was the reply of Henry IV of France, who one day reached Amiens after a prolonged journey. A local orator was deputed to harangue him, and commenced with a lengthy string of epithets:

"Very great sovereign, very good, very merciful, very magnanimous——"

"Add also," interrupted the weary monarch, "very tired."

The same king, who appears to have been a constant sufferer from the stupid orations of these wordy windbags, was listening to a speech in a small country town, when an ass brayed at a distance.

"Pardon me, gentlemen," said the witty sovereign; "one at a time, please."

Henry's minister, Sully, was a Protestant, and happening to hear that a famous physician had quitted Calvinism for Catholicism, the king said to him:

"My friend, your religion is in a bad way—the doctors give it up."

George III was the author of many clever sayings. Meeting Lord Kenyon at a levée soon after that eminent justice had been guilty of an extraordinary explosion of ill humor in the Court of King's Bench, the king remarked to him:

"My lord chief justice, I hear that you have lost your temper, and from my great regard for you I am glad to hear it, for I hope you will find a better one."

On another occasion, when coming out of the House of Lords after opening the session, he said to the lord chancellor:

"Did I deliver the speech well?"

"Very well indeed," was the reply.

"I am glad of that," said the king, "for there was nothing in it."

When Royalty Had Worst of It.

The laugh, however, has not always been upon the side of royalty. When the Prince-Bishop of Liège was riding to battle at the head of a fine body of troops he was asked by a spectator how he, a minister of religion, could engage in the iniquities of war.

"I wage war," said the prelate, "in my character of prince, not of archbishop."

"And pray," continued the interrogator, "when the devil carries off the prince, what will become of the archbishop?"

Decidedly the worst of the exchanges did an Eastern sovereign receive when, having bought several horses from some merchants, he gave them a lac of rupees to purchase more for him. Soon after they had departed, he, in a sportive humor, ordered his vizier to make out a list of all the fools in his dominions. The vizier did so, and put his majesty's name at the head of them. The king asked why. The vizier replied:

"Because you entrusted a lac of rupees to men you didn't know, and who will never come back."

"Aye, but suppose they should come back?"

"Then," said the vizier, "I shall erase your name and insert theirs."

In the answer which a German prince was given there seems to be a rebuke for his misgovernment implied. Having in a dream seen three rats, one fat, the other lean, and the third blind, he sent for a celebrated Bohemian gipsy and demanded an explanation.

"The fat rat," said she, "is your prime minister, the lean rat your people, and the blind rat yourself."

Court Laureate Too Frank.

One of the Shahs of Persia was more anxious than able to acquire fame as a poet. He had just completed a new performance in very "peculiar meter," and summoned the court poet into the royal presence to hear the poem read.

The laureate, when his opinion was asked (in theatrical language), "damned" the composition.

The Shah, enraged at this uncourtly criticism, gave orders that the court poet should be taken to the stable and tied up in the same stall with a donkey. Here the poor sinner remained until his royal rival had perpetrated another poem, when he was again commanded to appear before the throne and submit to a second infliction of sovereign dulness.

He listened in silence while the new poem was read, and at the conclusion, his opinion being required, he fell upon his knees and significantly exclaimed to the royal author:

"Send me back to the donkey!"