"Very well, indeed, sir," replied the minister, "now that your Majesty has taken the necessary step to relieve us of all anxiety. And, though I have not come on this occasion to intrude politics, it may interest you, sir, to hear that on the question of the Spiritual Chamber, the Archbishop and I have come to an arrangement, and the necessary legislation is to be carried through by the consent of both parties."
"Very gratifying, I am sure," said the King. "How did it come about?"
The Prime Minister hesitated. "Well, sir," he said, "there were several contributing causes: I need not go into them all. The one thing, however, which made some modification of our plans clearly necessary was the death of the Archimandrite of Cappadocia. After that our proposed consecration of Free Churchmen to the new bishoprics ceased to be possible. No doubt your Majesty will feel relieved."
"Yes, I am," murmured the King mildly.
And so was the Prime Minister; for that event, happening so fortuitously at the right moment, had saved his face; his political retreat was covered, partly at any rate, by the death—in a queer odor of sanctity all his own—of that exiled patriarch of the Eastern Church.
His exit, though opportune, had not been dramatic; attention being at the moment otherwise directed. His two wives nursed him devotedly to the end, and wrapped him for burial in the magnificent cape which in his brief day of political importance the Prime Minister had given him. Very quietly and unostentatiously he was laid to rest under the rites of an alien Church—for his own would have none of him; nor was there any one left to say of him now, in the land of his exile and temporary adoption, "Ah, Lord," or "Ah, his glory!" Only in his duplicated domestic circle was he in anywise missed; polities had shifted the ground from under him, and he had become negligible.
II
The King's recovery was the event of the new year, not only giving it an auspicious send-off, but lending thereafter a peculiar flavor to the whole social calendar. For months, addresses of congratulation kept coming in from all the societies and public bodies in the kingdom, and at every philanthropic function in which any member of royalty took part during the next twelve-month it gave pith to all the speeches and focussed the applause. Its influences extended to every department of public life; it affected politics, trade, public holiday, art, science; it invaded literature, increased the circulation of the newspapers, and lent inspiration even to poetry.
And those being the facts, how useless for satirists and cynics to pretend any longer that monarchy as an institution was not firmly and inextricably imbedded in the very life and habits of the Jingalese people?
Even at the universities the theme chosen for the prize poem that year was the King's recovery from sickness; and though the prizes were few an unusually large number of the rejected poems, owing to the popularity of their subject, were published in the local newspapers. Perhaps only a few of them were good, but one at least achieved success, and was recited at all charity bazaars, concerts, and theatrical entertainments given in the ensuing year. One couplet alone shall be here quoted, portraying as it does in graphic phrase the national suspense during those weeks of prolonged crisis when telegram after telegram continued to pour monotonous negation on the hopes of an expectant people—