Even into his Nineties, the old King remained hale and hearty. There wasn’t a person alive in the entire Kingdom who could recall a day when he wasn’t their king. His longevity had provided a stable platform for the nation to grow and prosper, in war as well as in peace. So the reasonable prosperity and the relative peace were the two main factors to explain the torrential outpour of emotion upon his death.
It was as if the only color in the world was black. Everything, mirrors, people, carriages, entire buildings were swathed in black cloth. The riotous lower classes even resorted to trampling other peoples gardens, even uprooting their rose bushes. More than one house was burned down because it didn’t place a solitary “mourning candle” in a darkened window. Typically, such a house might otherwise have been simply stoned, but such was the fever in these people that only an open blaze could treat their pangs.
Beautiful Photographs 