“Your majesty, it is impossible. I cannot permit etiquette to be violated in this manner, and I must beg your majesty to inform me most graciously of what you are going to do in these rooms?”
“Well,” said the king, with a pleasant smile, “I am going to do to-day what I am in the habit of doing every day at this hour—I am going to pay a visit to my wife.”
“To your WIFE!” exclaimed the mistress of ceremonies, in dismay. “But, your majesty, a king has no WIFE!”
“Ah! in that case a king would be a very wretched being,” said the king, smiling, “and, for my part, I would sooner give up my crown than my beloved wife.”
“Good Heaven, your majesty, you may certainly have a wife, but let me implore you not to apply that vulgar name to her majesty in the presence of other people. It is contrary to etiquette and injurious to the respect due to royalty.”
“My dear countess,” said the young king, gravely, “I believe, on the contrary, that it will only increase the respect which people will feel for us, if her majesty remains a woman in the noblest and truest meaning of the word, and my wife—I beg your pardon, I was going to say the queen—is such a woman. And now, my dear countess, permit me to go to her.”
“No,” exclaimed the mistress of ceremonies, resolutely. “Your majesty must first condescend to listen to me. For an hour already I have been waiting here for your majesty’s arrival, and you must now graciously permit me to speak to you as frankly and sincerely as is required by my duty and official position.”
“Well, I will listen to you, my dear countess,” said the king, with an inaudible sigh.
“Your majesty,” said the mistress of ceremonies, “I consider it my duty to beseech your majesty on this memorable day to confer upon me the power of enforcing the privileges of my office with more severity and firmness.”
“And to submit myself to your sceptre. That is what you want me to do, I suppose, dear countess?” asked the king, smiling.