The Young King  From Wikisource Jump to: navigation, search The
Young King by Oscar Wilde Listen to the text, read by Gregg
Margarite (19.49 MB, help | file info or download)   The lad--
for he was only a lad, being but sixteen years of age--was not
sorry at their departure, and had flung himself back with a deep
sigh of relief on the soft cushions of his embroidered couch,
lying there, wild-eyed and open-mouthed, like a brown woodland
Faun, or some young animal of the forest newly snared by the
hunters.  And, indeed, it was the hunters who had found him,
coming upon him almost by chance as, bare-limbed and pipe in
hand, he was following the flock of the poor goatherd who had
brought him up, and whose son he had always fancied himself to
be. The child of the old King's only daughter by a secret
marriage with one much beneath her in station--a stranger, some
said, who, by the wonderful magic of his lute-playing, had made
the young Princess love him; while others spoke of an artist
from Rimini, to whom the Princ