"What happened," said he, "is this. The Lord Functionary obeyed your orders, and less than a week ago word went to the management, happily engaged with its finishing touches to the play. Your share in the business, of course, was not mentioned; your cuttings had become the official act of the department. What that meant, you can perhaps hardly conceive. Here was popular musical comedy censored as it had never been censored before. Time was too short for negotiation; besides the whole thing was too drastic for half measures to be of any avail. Dullness, decorum, and disaster stared the management in the face. Suddenly perceiving that its strength lay in submission, it accepted the situation like a man, and in all Jingalo to-day, no hand is raised for the censorship. You have given it the coup de grâce—it will have to go; for you have enlisted the managers—the trade interest against it."
"I?" exclaimed the King.
"Its moral position, as I told you," went on his son, "had recently been shaken by the attacks of the intellectuals—a camp, however, so much in the minority that hitherto its hostility has not been seriously regarded. But now Jingalese drama, as a great commercial enterprise, an interest wherein hundreds of thousands of pounds are yearly invested, has been touched on the raw, and Jingalese drama has risen and shaken itself in wrath. The press, which depends on it for advertisement, has, of course, rushed to its assistance, and condemnation of the censorship now figures in stupendous headlines on all the posters. Leading articles, interviews, and indignation meetings are the order of the day; I wonder you can have missed them."
"I have been busy with other things," explained the King.
"Well, if you are not too busy to-night, I invite you to come and see your handiwork."
"I can hardly do that," said the King, "under the circumstances—if, as you say, there is disturbance going on."
"It is disturbance of a very unanimous kind," said the Prince; "the public is enjoying itself thoroughly. Did I not the other day advise you to reach out a fearless hand to democracy? Well, you have done so; and the dear, good beast has given you its paw."
"I don't think I can go."
"Then you will never understand. But, indeed, sir, I think that you should. I have taken a box under a private name and we can go unobserved; the play has already begun; and if you will keep to the back no one will know that you are there. Besides it is Lent, a season when the incognito of your visits becomes a recognized rule. Do you think you are justified in missing so vivid an interpretation of the popular will?"
The King's hesitation ended. "I suppose I must go on doing the unexpected," said he, "now that I have once begun."