"I don't think you would have attended; not so much as you do now."
And the King had to admit how, perhaps, that was true.
"Well, my dear," he said again, "I promise that it shall be seen to. No, I shan't forget."
And then she kissed him and thanked him, and went away comforted. And when he was alone he got down the index volume of Professor Teller's Constitutional History, and after some search under the heading of "Petitions" found indeed that Charlotte was right, and that the power to send messages to Parliament for the remedying of abuses was still his own.
CHAPTER XVII
THE INCREDIBLE THING HAPPENS
I
Since the break-up of his plans the King had been finding consolation in his son's book, an advance copy of which had reached him while Max was still abroad. Consolation is, perhaps, hardly the right word; it had distracted him in more ways than one; partly, and in a good sense, from his own personal depression over things gone wrong, but more with a scared apprehension of the terrible hubbub that would arise when its contents became known. The title, Government and the Governed, was sober enough, and the post-diluvian motto once threatened by Max had been omitted; but the contents were of a highly revolutionary character, and the bland "take-or-leave me" attitude of the author toward the public he would some day be called upon to rule was on a par with that statement of her prison doings which Charlotte was preparing for the delectation of Hans Fritz Otto, Prince of Schnapps-Wasser. In neither case did it seem likely that such a confession would draw parties together.
And so before the King had even finished reading he felt it his duty to write imploring his son not to publish.