"When authority has made itself absurd, could you wish it a better fate? To my mind, you have done a noble work."
"But this," said the King, "this is not what I intended at all."
Max smiled indulgently.
"So much the better," said he. "The unexpected is just as good for you, sir, as for others."
Then the King drew back again into his corner, to prepare himself for fresh shocks as the play went on.
The managerial device was simple, effective, and very easy to understand; and from start to finish it was played with little variation, though with ever-increasing success. Here and there, where for a long period no blue-penciled passage occurred, imaginary censorings had been inserted merely to whip curiosity, with the result that the atmosphere of innuendo and suggestion was greatly increased. Indeed, the whole piece reeked of it, new situations had been evolved which the play had not previously contained; and a stimulated audience sat metaphorically with its eye to an eye-hole from which the key had been accommodatingly withdrawn.
And then came the sensation of the evening.
Whether in the course of the performance the King had become so interested as to forget his caution, or whether between the acts too much light had penetrated the box at the back of which he had been sitting, it is now impossible to say. Just before the fall of the curtain he and the Prince got up and left, and traversing the still empty corridors unrecognized, returned to their carriage and the care of the anxiously waiting detectives. But somehow, as the play ended, a whisper got round from the stage and, like an electric flash, through the whole theater the fact of the royal visit became known.
Instantly, with cheer upon cheer, the audience broke into loyal and excited plaudits. The orchestra struck up the national anthem. Hands down popular opinion had won; for in this matter of "the new censorship" as it was called—in this attack upon the interests and liberties, not of a foolish minority, but of a sacred and freedom-loving public, Jingalo and its monarch had joined forces, and bureaucracy was dethroned.
The next day it was on all the posters; newspapers celebrated the event in flaring headlines—"The King Condemns the Censor!" And before the week was over, the Lord Functionary had resigned his high office on grounds of health.