ty: I daresay a bishopric has got
its price if we only knew!"

The King would have rejected such a suggestion as fantastic only a month
ago; but now with the Archimandrite in his mind he began to be
suspicious. What price, monetary or political, might not the Free
Churchmen be paying for their bishoprics, what secret bargain of which
it was no one's duty to inform him? He lashed at his own impotence, for
the ignominy of his position increased with his growing consciousness.
Here was the Prime Minister respectful but compulsive, able to threaten,
to browbeat, to dictate terms; but he himself had no counter means to
extract from that minister on what terms he was consenting to do these
things or what price he was paying to get them done. How
constitutionally was he to obtain knowledge of anything? And still,
piling up the accusation, the voice of Max went on.

"I presume," said he, "that quite lately a list of Jubilee honors has
been submitted to you for approval. What does your approval mean? Is a
single one of them your own selection? Do you know what the majority of
them are for?"

The King shook his head. "Mostly they are political," said he. "The
Government has the right; I have no call to interfere. Isn't it perhaps
better that I should not interfere?"

"It may be arguable, sir, that the uncomfortably high position to which
we are born cuts us off from the more strenuously fermenting issues of
the political game, and from the malignities and hypocrisies of that
party system of which, as a nation, we pretend to be so proud, and are
secretly so much ashamed. It may be well that some single authority
should stand removed from and above party, if in the hands of that
authority there is also left power of sentence and dismissal, power also
to withhold unmerited reward. But that power you are no longer expected
to exercise,--it lies like a china nest-egg never to be hatched, but
only to promote the laying of other eggs.

"Yet while your prerogatives have been thus diminished, the claim that
you shall act with judicial impartiality has increased, and has become a
fetter. To oppose any course of ministerial action to-day is by
implication to ally yourself with the other side. You are in the
position of a judge whose directions the jury has authority to ignore,
and from whose hands all power of imposing a penalty has practically
been withdrawn. And these changes have been thrust upon the monarchy by
the will, not of th