"How possibly can it be indecent," protested the King, "when it has already run for five hundred nights at one of our leading theaters?"
Max smiled. "Father," he said, "in all your life have you ever once been in a crowd—formed part of it, I mean? Well, then, how can you tell? I have. There is plenty of indecency in a Jingalese crowd—especially indecent suggestion; and it is crowds the theaters have to cater for."
"Still, they have the Censor to reckon with."
"The Censor!" exclaimed Max. "Have you ever asked the Lord Functionary, who controls him, to show you the text of the plays he passes?—or gone further in order to compare them with those he does not pass? Till you have, you know nothing about the Censor's protective powers. He merely protects the existing order of things, like yourself; whatever is paying and popular it becomes his duty to countenance. Well, all that is strictly within your own department, for the supervision of the morals of the stage is still a royal prerogative outside parliamentary control. And I tell you this—that if you were to begin exercising your prerogative conscientiously you would get into more intimate touch with the popular will than would suit the calculations of your ministers. As for the Lord Functionary, he would probably resign. He might be glad of the excuse. Just now there is a considerable row on, and he finds himself in hot water. When you see him you had better ask him about it; and as he is technically the keeper of your conscience you really have a concern in the matter. What has he been doing? Oh, merely drawing the usual invidious distinction between adultery treated seriously and adultery treated as a joke. Under this latter and more popular form it is now occupying with success half the theaters in Jingalo. And if you want to see the deeps open, and understand what they contain,—well, there you have your cue: follow it! Only do that, and you will light such a candle—Ah! now I am quoting from English history; and as I am only concerned with that of Jingalo—I perceive that my present chapter has come to an end. May I take another cigar?"
III
All this time the King had sat cautiously imbibing the stimulus of his son's words. They sent a curious glow through his system; for they touched on the very point which was now daily engaging his thoughts—how, in connection with his own ministerial problem, to do the thing which Brasshay did not expect without thereby involving the prestige of the monarchy in ruin. He looked at his son, so full of self-confidence, so easy and unconcerned in the opinions of others, and very greatly he envied him.
"Max," he said slowly, "you are a very dangerous character."
And Max was flattered, as your man of words and not of deeds always is flattered when the attributes which belong by rights to his betters are ascribed to him.
Nevertheless, in this instance the epithet was well earned, for these secret potations of Max were having their effect upon the King's brain; they reproduced in facsimile the cerebral excitement which had followed upon his fall, and touching the same spot kindled in him a curious mental ardor, which sent him to his Council a different person altogether, one whom his ministers were finding it difficult to recognize and still more difficult to reconcile to their plans. Only when the effects had died down towards the end of each day did the King become himself again. Obstreperous till noon, he would then quiet down by degrees till, at six o'clock, his spirits had reached a strange nadir of depression. Had Brasshay only caught him then, in that period of reaction, he would have found him unformidable as of old; but Brasshay did not know. And then, night after night, came Max with his tangle of words and whipped him into fresh revolt.
He still carried the memory of that last conversation—that chapter which Max had composed into the echoing cavities of his brain—when he next encountered the Lord Functionary.