"But what will you do?" he asked.
"I shall be a simple subject of the new King, earning my living by my own toil."
The Chancellor raised his eyebrows at this.
"I suppose you think," said the King haughtily, "that I have not the intelligence to earn my own living."
The Chancellor with a cough remarked that the very distinguished qualities which made an excellent King did not always imply the corresponding—er—and so on.
"That shows how little you know about it. Just to give one example. I happen to know that I have in me the makings of an excellent swineherd."
"A swineherd?"
"The man who—er—herds the swine. It may surprise you to hear that, posing as a swineherd, I have conversed with another of the profession upon his own subject, without his suspecting the truth. It is just such a busy outdoor life as I should enjoy. One herds and one milks, and one milks, and—er—herds, and so it goes on day after day." A happy smile, the first the Chancellor had ever seen there, spread itself over his features. He clapped the Chancellor playfully on the back and added, "I shall simply love it."
The Chancellor was amazed. What a story for his dinner-parties when the war was over!
"How will you announce it?" he asked, and his tone struck a happy mean between the tones in which you address a monarch and a pig-minder respectively.