aging his
thoughts--how, in connection with his own ministerial problem, to do the
thing which Brasshay did not expect without thereby involving the
prestige of the monarchy in ruin. He looked at his son, so full of
self-confidence, so easy and unconcerned in the opinions of others, and
very greatly he envied him.

"Max," he said slowly, "you are a very dangerous character."

And Max was flattered, as your man of words and not of deeds always is
flattered when the attributes which belong by rights to his betters are
ascribed to him.

Nevertheless, in this instance the epithet was well earned, for these
secret potations of Max were having their effect upon the King's brain;
they reproduced in facsimile the cerebral excitement which had followed
upon his fall, and touching the same spot kindled in him a curious
mental ardor, which sent him to his Council a different person
altogether, one whom his ministers were finding it difficult to
recognize and still more difficult to reconcile to their plans. Only
when the effects had died down towards the end of each day did the King
become himself again. Obstreperous till noon, he would then quiet down
by degrees till, at six o'clock, his spirits had reached a strange nadir
of depression. Had Brasshay only caught him then, in that period of
reaction, he would have found him unformidable as of old; but Brasshay
did not know. And then, night after night, came Max with his tangle of
words and whipped him into fresh revolt.

He still carried the memory of that last conversation--that chapter
which Max had composed into the echoing cavities of his brain--when he
next encountered the Lord Functionary.

Certain questions of court etiquette and procedure having been disposed
of: "By the way," said his Majesty, "I was told yesterday that you are
being criticised--in the play department, I mean."

The Lord Functionary had been spending sleepless nights in a scrambling
attempt to acquire a literary education; but his own royal master was
the last person to whom he would give himself away; so he only smiled
with that air of deference and self-complacence which all court
officials know how to combine. "I have heard rumors of it, sir," he
replied, in a tone of easy detachment.

"Who are making the complaints?"

"Certain members of Parliament, I believe. They have constituents to
satisfy; and under a democracy, of course, autocrats can never do
right."

"Are you the autocrat?" inquir