rite a pantomime for them--call the
sausages classic festoons, and the policeman cut in two a tragedy of
public duty? But why am I talking? Why am I asking questions of a nice
young gentleman who is totally mad? What is the good of it? What is
the good of anything? Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!"

Suddenly he pulled himself upright.

"Don't you really think the sacred Notting Hill at all absurd?"

"Absurd?" asked Wayne, blankly. "Why should I?"

The King stared back equally blankly.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

"Notting Hill," said the Provost, simply, "is a rise or high ground of
the common earth, on which men have built houses to live, in which
they are born, fall in love, pray, marry, and die. Why should I think
it absurd?"

The King smiled.

"Because, my Leonidas--" he began, then suddenly, he knew not how,
found his mind was a total blank. After all, why was it absurd? Why
was it absurd? He felt as if the floor of his mind had given way. He
felt as all men feel when their first principles are hit hard with a
question. Barker always felt so when the King said, "Why trouble about
politics?"

The King's thoughts were in a kind of rout; he could not collect them.

"It is generally felt to be a little funny," he said vaguely.

"I suppose," said Adam, turning on him with a fierce suddenness--"I
suppose you fancy crucifixion was a serious affair?"

"Well, I--" began Auberon--"I admit I have generally thought it had
its graver side."

"Then you are wrong," said Wayne, with incredible violence.
"Crucifixion is comic. It is exquisitely diverting. It was an absurd
and obscene kind of impaling reserved for people who were made to be
laughed at--for slaves and provincials, for dentists and small
tradesmen, as you would say. I have seen the grotesque gallows-shape,
which the little Roman gutter-boys scribbled on walls as a vulgar
joke, blazing on the pinnacles of the temples of the world. And shall
I turn back?"

The King made no answer.

Adam went on, his voice ringing in the roof.

"This laughter with which men tyrannise is not the great power you
think it. Peter was crucified, and crucified head downwards. What
could be funnier than the idea of a respectable old Apostle upside
down? What could be more in the style of your modern humour? But what
was the good of it? Upside down or right side up, Peter was Peter to
mankind. Upside down he stills hangs over Europe, and millions move
and breathe only in the life of