40 KING LEAR.

steward insulted the King, and the Earl of Kent showed his respect for
the King’s Majesty by tripping up the caitiff into the gutter. The King
had now two friends—the Earl of Kent, whom he only knew as his
servant, and his Fool, who was faithful to him although he had given
away his kingdom. Goneril was not contented with letting her father
suffer insults at the hands of her servants. She told him plainly that
his train of one hundred knights only served to fill her Court with riot
and feasting; and so she begged him to dismiss them, and only keep
a few old men about him such as himself.

“My train are men who know all parts of duty,” said Lear.
“Saddle my horses, call my train together. Goneril, I will not trouble
you further—yet I have left another daughter.”

And he cursed his daughter, Goneril, praying that she might never
have a child, or that if she had, it might treat her as cruelly as she had
treated him. And his horses being saddled, he set out with his followers
for the castle of Regan, his other daughter. Lear sent on his servant
Caius, who was really the Earl of Kent, with letters to his daughter to
say he was coming. But Caius fell in with a messenger of Goneril—in
fact that very steward whom he had tripped into the gutter—and beat
him soundly for the mischief-maker
that he was; and Regan, when she
heard it, put Caius in the stocks,
not respecting him as a messenger
coming from her father. And
she who had formerly
outdone her sister in
professions of attach-
ment to the King,
now seemed to outdo
= ' her in undutiful con-
duct, saying that fifty
knights were too many
to wait on him, that
five and twenty were
enough, and Goneril
(who had hurried