King Henry gave ready credence to the flattery of his truckle-chair and his courtiers, and as he rolled along in it through the saloons glittering with gold, and through halls adorned with Venetian mirrors, which reflected his form a thousandfold, he liked to lull himself into the dream of being a triumphing hero, and wholly forgot that it was not his deeds, but his fat, that had helped him to his triumphal car.
For that monstrous mass which filled up the colossal chair, that mountain of purple-clad flesh, that clumsy, almost shapeless mass, that was Henry the Eighth, king of merry England.

But thae mass had a head--a head full of dark and wrathful thoughts, a heart full of bloodthirsty and cruel lusts.

The colossal body was indeed, by its physical weight, fastened to the chair.

Yet his mind never rested, but he hovered, with the talons and flashing eye of the bird of prey, over his people, ever ready to pounce upon some innocent dove, to drink her blood, and tear out her heart, that he might lay it, all palpitating, as an offering on the altar of his sanguinary god.
The king's sedan now stopped, and Catharine hastened forward with smiling face, to assist her royal husband in alighting.
Henry greeted her with a gracious nod, and rejected the proffered aid of the attendant pages.
"Away," said he, "away! My Catharine alone shall extend me her hand, and give me a welcome to the bridal chamber.

Go, we feel to-day as young and strong as in our best and happiest days, and the young queen shall see that it is no decrepit graybeard, tottering with age, who woos her, but a strong man rejuvenated by love.