en, all this unchangeableness of things having been
thus ratified and sealed with the official seal, the King, his
ministers, and the whole political world advanced to the edge of changes
such as the country had not seen the like of for the last hundred years.

CHAPTER VIII

PACE-MAKING IN POLITICS

I

Inside the Council, meanwhile, curious and uncomfortable things had been
happening. The King's talkativeness had steadily increased; no one could
reduce him to reason.

"He reminds me," said one of his ministers irritably, "of the
school-boy's story of the tea-kettle which discovered locomotion. Off
boiled the lid: 'Why!' cries the observant inventor, 'put that upon
wheels and it would go!' So he put it upon wheels and it went. He is
exactly like that tea-kettle on wheels, miraculously set going without
any inside reason to guide him! In my opinion before long there will
have to be a regency." He tapped his skull meaningly, but in the wrong
place: he should have tapped the back of it.

"What? Prince Max!" ejaculated his auditor; "I should hardly call that a
remedy!"

"Nothing can be worse," declared the other, "than things as they are!"

In that he made a mistake; they were going to be much worse. The King's
new mental activities were only just getting into their stride; and from
a very unexpected quarter he was about to receive aid.

At the Council board, where the King had now found voice, one alone sat
humorously interested and amused--the Minister of Fine Arts. He was not
an artist himself--had he been he would never have been allowed to
occupy that position; he was a Professor of History, Teller by name,
and more than any of his fellow-ministers he studied life. Nothing
interested him so much as the human machine; and to see this rather
humdrum monarch suddenly developing into a tea-kettle on wheels, as his
colleague had so happily phrased it, filled him with profound interest
and an underlying sympathy.

Dimly the King had become aware that somewhere in that body of adroit
shufflers who were supposed to minister to his constitutional needs the
confused cry of his conscience had evoked an echo. He saw under a high
bald forehead kindly eyes watching him; and it was a kindly voice
charged with considerateness which one day, over a matter in which time
pressed, begged for a further interview.

International exhibitions had become the vogue; and in putting on its
peace paint for the Jubilee, Jin