”Come, my fair Cordelia,” said the King of France; and, secure in her true lover’s tender protection, the young girl passed from the home that had so cruelly spurned her. Goneril and Regan What Cordelia had feared with respect to her sisters speedily came to pass. When the kingdom was safely in their possession, their true natures became apparent, and they showed themselves for what they really were--false, cruel, and utterly heartless women. The arrangement had been that King Lear, with a hundred knights, was to stay a month at each daughter’s in turn, but before his term of residence at his eldest son-in-law’s, the Duke of Albany, had come to an end, Goneril contrived, by her outrageous behaviour, to drive him from the palace. She pretended that his knights brought disorder into her household; and although her father had presented her with half his kingdom as a dowry, she grudged even the small expenditure of maintaining this paltry band of followers. She ordered her steward Oswald and her servants to treat him with open negligence and disrespect, in the hope of bringing about a quarrel; if it were to her father’s distaste, she said brutally, he could go to her sister’s; she knew that Regan was of the same mind with herself in the resolve, as they expressed it, “not to be overruled.” “Idle old man,” remarked Goneril contemptuously, “who would like still to manage the authorities that he has given away.” Lear, always fiery-tempered and impetuous, was certainly not one to submit tamely to such insulting treatment, and, almost out of his mind at the base ingratitude of Goneril and the insolence of her domestics, he ordered his horses to be got ready, and prepared to depart to his second daughter. He now began to repent of his harshness to Cordelia, and to realise how foolish he had been in parting so rashly with his authority. But the poor, headstrong old King had one friend near him of whom he did not know. The faithful Earl of Kent loved his master in spite of his faults, and determined not to forsake him in the evil days which he knew must be at hand. In the guise of a poor man, Kent came to the palace of the Duke of Albany, and persuaded King Lear to take him into his service. One other devoted follower was also left to the King--his faithful Fool, or jester. The loving loyalty of this man never failed, and his deep attachment to his royal master was touching to see. In the midst of the vexations which fretted his impatient spirit, the old King turned for refreshment to the quaint sayings of this humble friend; had he but known it, the intelligence of this poor Fool far surpassed in wisdom his own mad folly.