to look under my bed to see whether
assassins are not lurking there? On one occasion I was laid up with
influenza, but I had to submit to that form and superstition because it
had become traditional. And all the papers gloated over the fact, and
called it 'a link in the chain of monarchy,' though as a matter of fact
the conspiracy in question had been got up against that branch of the
succession which we afterwards succeeded in dethroning. All the personal
inconvenience I had to endure on that occasion was as nothing in
comparison to the satisfaction which the public got out of it. No, Mr.
Prime Minister, if you are going to do away with things because they are
forms and superstitions, then I institute the Order of the New Broom,
and I make you the first Knight of it; and the rest of your life will
have to be spent in sweeping." ("And oh!" thought the King, feeling
himself in form, "I only wish Max could hear me now!")

Failing in his personal appeal the Prime Minister turned on the
Departments, and the King fought them one by one: the Board of Works
which wanted to have the roads up; the Clerk of the Weather who said
that a depression unsuitable for open-air gatherings was crossing
Europe; the Chief of the Police who said that so large an open space was
bad for a crowd; the Minister of Public Worship who wished everything to
be done--if done at all--indoors and unobtrusively, by preference in one
of the Royal Chapels: the effect, he said, would be more reverent. And
when all these in turn had failed, the Prime Minister asked for a
Council on the subject, and was told it was none of the Council's
business.

"I am Grand Master in my own Order," said the King, "and you, as one of
its Knights, in any matter pertaining to the Order owe me your
unquestioning obedience."

That was unanswerable; he did. And so the King got his way.

II

The revival proved a tremendous success, although it did not reproduce
the medieval conditions in their entirety.

The twelve old women were left out; it was not considered decent for the
King to wash their feet in public and the Queen absolutely refused to do
so. Instead they were invited to take tea at the Palace, and afterwards
were all presented with foot-warmers.

In other directions also invidious distinctions were attempted, and a
certain amount of controversy was raised. The Bishops made a scrambling
and desultory fight for it that, as the steps of the Cathedral were to
be us