y of his colleagues were as ignorant of
constitutional history as the sovereign himself? But some knew--some
must know! And the King, who but a few hours before had believed himself
the most helpless of emblems, a mere ornamental topknot to the
constitutional edifice, now found himself armed with weapons of
far-reaching precision that would enable him to carry war into the
enemy's country. Metaphorically he clapped his wings and crowed. Yes, it
was as though that weathercock, to which hitherto he had likened
himself, that toy of chance, swung this way and that upon a pivot with
no will of its own, had suddenly taken to itself life and wing and
power, and quitting its stake had descended into the arena with beak and
claw stiffened for the fray. That board of tormenting ministers was now
in his power--for a time at any rate.

In his excitement he got upon his feet and trotted about the room, and
pausing now and again he gazed ahead with a gloating eye on a whole
series of ministerial councils to come. For this monarch, you must
remember, had been departmentalized all his life, and to that extent
dehumanized; and it was only in a departmental way that he recognized
his opportunity. The power to strike which he now visualized came
through no intellectual enlargement, no opening up of moral vistas, but
only through the discovery that he had on his side a mass of red tape
the existence of which he had not previously suspected. In similar
trammels to those which had so long hampered and restricted his own
movements it was now possible for him to entangle the goings of his
ministers. A hundred and one things had been done which were not merely
out of order but--oh, blessed word!--unconstitutional; and in
consequence the poor dear man's mind was in a welter of delight. At last
he had a weapon to his hand whose reach and mechanism he could
manipulate. "Oh, dear me, yes!" he said to himself, and said it several
times.

When a character of childlike simplicity has got hold of a loaded gun,
it has a natural instinct to let it off. The actual direction, and what
the target is to be, are not so important as the delightful sense of
hearing the gun go off,--of proving by actual demonstration that it
really was a loaded and dangerous thing, capable of causing
consternation. John of Jingalo was simple, and when he got up from his
first solid reading of the Professor's volumes he felt that he was well
primed; and his instinct was to let