He began his speech by paying a well-deserved tribute to the troops, both regular and irregular, who had fought so bravely in crushing the revolt. Their courage and endurance had been beyond all praise; but they had been sustained by the hope of rescuing their beloved King from the hands of the dastardly conspirators who sought to deprive him of his throne. The struggle was successful, the victory was won, but, alas! success had come too late. Their young sovereign, who had given up the splendid prospects which belonged to him in his own country in order to lead the forlorn hope in Thracia, had chosen to die rather than forsake the trust he had received from the people. He was the last martyr on the glorious roll of Thracian independence. Let them look around them. There on the hill above them was the sacred shrine at which, that very day, Carlino was to have received the crown of Thracia, and there also was the palace in which he should have lived for many happy years, beloved and honoured. But beside them there flowed the river, accursed from that day forward, whose waters had rolled over his blood-stained corpse, and there remained yet in the land of the living the miscreants who had not scrupled to murder in cold blood a bound and defenceless man. The yell of mingled rage and grief which arose from the people at these words rendered it impossible for the speaker to proceed with his oration for some minutes; but at last he succeeded in restoring comparative silence, broken only by the sobs of the women. What now remained for Thracia? he demanded. She had lost her place among the nations; she could not protect the stranger who had come at her call to assist her. But at least she could avenge his death, both on the traitors who had sprung from her own soil and on the perfidious nation which had stooped to use such instruments to further its shameful ends. With this object in view let her proceed without an hour’s delay to the election of another king, and who could be better fitted for the post than the illustrious Prince who had been raised up by Providence to help her in her utmost need, and who had striven side by side with her own sons for the rescue of Carlino? That Prince, he went on, checking by an imperative gesture the protest which Prince Otto Georg sprang forward to make, had shrunk once already from accepting the throne, owing to a sensitive modesty which did him all honour, but this was no time for holding back. Thracia appealed to him to accept the place left vacant by the man who had been moved by its very difficulties to undertake it,--would the German hang behind where the Englishman had pressed forward? Let the Prince make his decision, knowing, as he did, that his election would be hailed with delight by the country, and welcomed by all Europe with the exception of Scythia, and let him devote his life to the avenging of Caerleon’s murder.