“A murderer and a villain!” continued Hamlet, with increasing scorn and vehemence; “a slave that is not the twentieth part the tithe of your former lord; a buffoon king; a cutpurse of the empire and the sceptre, who from the shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in his pocket!” “No more!” besought the Queen. “A king of shreds and patches----” Hamlet’s torrent of wrath died on his lips. Before him stood once more the spirit of his father, gazing at him with calm, rebuking eyes. “Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings, you heavenly guards!” murmured the young Prince, in an awestruck whisper. “What would your gracious figure?” The vision, apparent to Hamlet, was not visible to the Queen. She only saw the sudden change that had come to her son, and the rapt look on his face. “Alas, he’s mad!” she sighed. “Do you not come your tardy son to chide?” continued Hamlet, still in the same hushed voice, “who, lost in time and passion, lets go by the important acting of thy dread command? Oh, say!” The Ghost replied that his visit was indeed to whet his son’s almost blunted purpose. But now he bade Hamlet note how startled and amazed the Queen was, and told him to speak to her and soothe her. “How is it with you, lady?” said Hamlet absently. “Alas! how is it with you?” retorted the Queen, for to her it seemed that Hamlet was looking at vacancy, and holding converse with the empty air. “Whereon do you look?” “On him--on him! Look you, how pale he glares!... Do you see nothing there?” “Nothing at all; yet all that is, I see.” “Nor did you nothing hear?” “No, nothing but ourselves.” “Why, look you there! Look how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he lived! Look where he goes, even now, out at the portal.” The Queen saw nothing of the figure gliding away, and told Hamlet that it must be the coinage of his brain, the sort of delusion which madness was very cunning in. “Madness!” echoed Hamlet; and he bade his mother note that his pulse beat as calmly as her own, and that it was not madness which he uttered. Bring him to the test, he said, and he would re-word the matter, which madness could not do. In short, his words were so convincing that the Queen could no longer refuse to believe them. Before they parted, she promised to adopt a very different mode of behaviour from her usual pleasure-loving frivolity, and not to allow herself to be persuaded by the crafty Claudius that anything her son might say or do arose from madness. [Illustration: “Do you not come your tardy son to chide?”] “I must to England; you know that?” asked Hamlet. “Alack, I had forgotten; it is so arranged,” said the Queen. “There are letters sealed,” said Hamlet, “and my two schoolfellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fanged--they bear the mandate. Let the knavery work; for ’tis sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard, and it shall go hard but I will delve one yard below their mines, and blow them at the moon.”