"We all do, sir—one way or the other. With great questions that is inevitable."
"You admit it is a great question?"
"I should never have so troubled your Majesty were it a small one."
The King's thoughts shifted.
"What a pity it is," said he, "that I and my ministers have never been friends."
"Have not loyal service and humble duty some claim to be so regarded?" inquired the Prime Minister. But the King let this official veneer of the facts pass unregarded.
"It would have helped things," he went on. "As it is, when I differ from my ministers I am all alone. It is in moments of difficulty like this that the head of the State realizes his weakness."
"There again, sir, you do yourself an injustice."
"Ah, that is easily said. But what does my power amount to when all is done? Perhaps at the cost of constant friction with my ministers I have been able to delay things for a while—given the country more time to make up its mind; but then, unfortunately, it was thinking of other things, and I myself provided the counter attraction. What I was trying to do in one way I was rendering of no effect in another; all that I intended politically has been swamped in ceremony."
"Your Majesty was never more popular than to-day," observed the Prime Minister. "That in itself is a power."