"How is it," inquired his father, "that you have been able to think of these things? I see them when you tell me; but how did they ever come to enter your head?"
"For some years," answered Max, "I had the advantage of being your youngest son. Until I was twenty, two lives stood between me and the succession, and while Stephen and Rupert were drilling I managed to get educated."
"Poor Rupert!" murmured his father, "he would have made a much better King than either of us."
"I don't think so," said Max. "He would merely have kept the monarchy to its old lines—that means sticking in a rut. If the monarchy is to mean anything it will have to move, not merely with the times but ahead of them."
"How can it move ahead of them?"
"How otherwise can it lead? That is what the heads of the privileged classes never seem to understand. Look at the Bishops! See what a spectacle they have made of themselves, all through not leading."
"Ah, yes," sighed the King; "I thought you'd be against the Bishops."
"Against them?" cried Max, "of course I'm against them! The Bishops are a set of prehistoric remains: and even if they were all up to date, a combined house of Bishops and Judges with full legislative powers is antediluvian (I'm speaking of the Deluge now in the sense in which Louis XV spoke of it)—it's an eighteenth-century arrangement.
"Yes, I'm against the Bishops, but I'm much more against the Cabinet. The Cabinet is seeking to control not only the Upper but the Lower Chamber as well, it is fighting the Bishops merely to delude the people; and there are the Laity so stupid, or so lazy, or so corrupt that they won't see it. Every one knows that the Government sells honors for party purposes, and then covers it up by pretending that contributions to the party funds are 'public services.' Everything now is to be had for a price, a Chancellery at so much, a Knighthood at so much more; an Order of the this, that, or the other, in exact proportion to its prestige or its rarity. Last year they had a debate on it in the House, a debate where, between them, the corruptors and the corrupted were in a majority! And they solemnly took a vote on it, and declared that there was no corruption, though everybody knew it to be a fact. The Opposition lay low because they mean to do exactly the same when their time comes. Oh, and it's not only the House of Laity: I daresay a bishopric has got its price if we only knew!"
The King would have rejected such a suggestion as fantastic only a month ago; but now with the Archimandrite in his mind he began to be suspicious. What price, monetary or political, might not the Free Churchmen be paying for their bishoprics, what secret bargain of which it was no one's duty to inform him? He lashed at his own impotence, for the ignominy of his position increased with his growing consciousness. Here was the Prime Minister respectful but compulsive, able to threaten, to browbeat, to dictate terms; but he himself had no counter means to extract from that minister on what terms he was consenting to do these things or what price he was paying to get them done. How constitutionally was he to obtain knowledge of anything? And still, piling up the accusation, the voice of Max went on.