ide into battle at the head of their armies: even the cadets of
royalty, when they get leave to go, are kept as much out of danger as
possible. But if royalty cannot lead in something more serious than the
trooping of colors and the laying of foundation-stones, then royalty is
no longer in the running.

"Now what you ought to do is--find out at what point it would break with
all tradition for you to be really natural and think and act as an
ordinary gentleman of sense and honor, and then--go and do it! The
Government would roll its eyes in horror; the whole Court would be in
commotion; but with the people generally you would win hands down!"

"Max, you are tempting me!" said the King.

"Sir," said his son, "I cannot express to you how great is my wish to be
proud of your shoes if hereafter I have to step into them. Could you not
just once, for my sake, do something that no Government would
expect--just to disturb that general smugness of things which is to-day
using the monarchy as its decoy?"

The King gazed upon the handsome youth with eyes of hunger and
affection. "What is it that you want me to do?" he inquired.

Max held out his cigar at arm's length, looked at it reflectively, and
flicked off the ash.

"Don't do that on the carpet!" said his father.

Max smiled. "That is so like you, father," he said; "yes, that is you
all over. You don't like to give trouble even to the housemaid. Now when
you see things going wrong you ought to give trouble--serious trouble, I
mean. You ought, in vulgar phrase, to 'do a bust.'

"When I was a small boy," he went on, "I used to read fairy stories and
look at pictures. And there was one that I have always remembered of a
swan with a crown round its neck floating along a stream with its beak
wide open, singing its last song. To me that picture has ever since
represented the institution of monarchy going to its death. The crown,
too large and heavy to remain in place, has slipped down from its head
and settled like a collar or yoke about its neck. Its head, in
consequence, is free, and it begins to sing its 'Nunc dimittis.' The
question to me is--what 'Nunc dimittis' are we going to sing? I do not
know whether you ever read English poetry; but some lines of Tennyson
run in my head; let me, if I can remember, repeat them now--

"'The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low,