But fortune-tellers have sometimes told uncomfortable things to royalty. There is a singular anecdote of Charles I. traditional at Hampton Court Palace. The story runs that one day he was standing at a window of the palace, when a gipsy came up and asked for charity. Her appearance and attitude excited ridicule, which so infuriated and enraged the gipsy, that she took out of her basket a looking-glass and presented it to the King, who saw therein his own head decollated. Another tradition of a similar nature--of which there is more than one version--is connected with the mode of divination known as the _Sortes Virgilianæ_. According to one account, King Charles when at Oxford was shown a magnificent Virgil, and when induced by Lord Falkland to make a trial of his fortune by the _Sortes Virgilianæ_, he opened the volume at the Fourth Book of the Æneid (615 _et seq._), which contained the following passage:-- “By a bold people’s stubborn arms opprest, Forced to forsake the land he once possess’d, Torn from his dearest son, let him in vain Seek help, and see his friends unjustly slain. Let him to base unequal terms submit, In hope to save his crown, yet lose both it And life at once, untimely let him die, And on an open stage unburied lie.” Wellwood adds, “It is said that King Charles seemed concerned at the accident, and that the Lord Falkland, observing it, would also try his own fortune in the same way, hoping that he might fall on some passage that could have no relation to his case, and thereby divert the King’s thoughts from any impression that the other had made on him; but the place that Lord Falkland stumbled upon was yet more suited to his destiny than the other had been to the King’s, being the expression of Evander upon the untimely death of his son Pallas, as thus translated by Dryden:-- “O Pallas! thou hast fail’d thy plighted word, To fight with caution, nor to tempt the sword. I warned thee but in vain; for well I knew What perils youthful ardour will pursue; That boiling blood would carry thee too far, Young as thou wert in dangers, raw to war! O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom, Preludes of bloody fields, and fights to come!”