At this news the King looked really aghast. "And you propose, while I am spending myself in trying to add luster——" he began, then checked himself; "you propose to publish a work which may destroy the confidence at present subsisting between the sovereign and the people?"
"Would not false confidence be a worse alternative, sir?" inquired Max.
"But you are doing it in my time," said the King plaintively; "it is my reign you are disturbing, not your own. I don't think you have any right."
"My dear father," answered the Prince, "the more impossible I prove myself to be, the more popular you will become."
But the King was not to be consoled by that prospect; he was working not for himself alone—not for himself, indeed, at all.
"Max," he said earnestly, "believe me, monarchy, even at the present day, is of the greatest social and political value. Unsettle it in the public mind, and you unsettle the basis of government and the sacredness of property; everything else goes with it. The hereditary principle has in its keeping all that makes for stability, continuity, and tradition; nothing can adequately take its place."
"Do not forget, sir," said his son, "that if we follow our heredity back far enough, ours is an elected monarchy. And if once you admit election you must admit also the right of the to-be-elected one to offer or refuse his candidature. The nation cannot play fast and loose, as it has done, with the principle of male primogeniture, and at the same time impose upon us, its candidates for election, an unavoidable obligation to accept the burden of heredity. No; let us have the matter quite clear. If the people—as they have done by others in the past—claim the right to reject me, should I prove myself an outrageous and impossible character, I equally claim the right to reject them; and I must see them capable of making a reasonable use of my services before I will consent to be made use of."
"Well," said the King, breathing in resignation, "I suppose I ought not to mind too much. 'After me the Deluge,' is a wise enough saying when one has no power to prevent it."
"'After me the Deluge,'" said Max, "has come down to us with a muddled application. If monarchy would only adopt it as its motto, monarchy would be good for another thousand years. Louis XV said it; and Louis XVI failed to give it effect. Had he but placed himself at the head of the Deluge, in the very forefront of its rush and roar, waved his hat to it and cried: 'After me!' like a captain to his company, and started off at a gallop, it would have obeyed and followed him. 'After me the Deluge!' should be the rallying cry of the monarchy for the renewal of its youth, not the quavering note of its dotage. That is the motto I am going to put on the title-page of my book."
"Good gracious!" cried the King.