The King was much puzzled over the whole affair; and his advisers did their best to keep him mystified. Both the Prime Minister and the late Lord Functionary himself earnestly assured him that his conscientious interference had had nothing whatever to do with the latter's retirement; for at this juncture it would never have done for the monarch to suppose that he held so much power over the official lives of his ministers. Quite by accident he had come in contact with that great unknown quantity "the popular will," and, without in the least realizing what he was about, had first touched it on the raw, and then tickled it; and the "dear good beast," as Max phrased it, recognizing only the second part of his performance, had turned rapturously round and given him its paw.
The King had his scruples; he did not like thus to win popularity by accident, and yet, the more he looked into it, the more he saw this for a fact, that by committing a popular faux pas he had secured far more consideration from his ministers than by doing the correct thing.
John of Jingalo did not yet understand that his correctness of conduct was one of the chief factors relied on by a bureaucratic government for reducing him to political insignificance. He had yet to learn that a submissive and well-behaved monarchy was essential to its very existence.
CHAPTER VII
THE OLD ORDER
I
All this, the reader will remember, had taken place in Lent. The King had done something which according to the accepted canons was quite incorrect; he had been to a frivolous but popular play during the penitential season and it had got into the papers. But instead of being blamed for it he had gained enormously in popularity.
Now had his Majesty been merely aiming for this, as politicians aim for it (deserting principles for party, or party when its principles become a hindrance), he might have followed the lead given him by the people of Jingalo, and, recognizing that the Church Calendar had lost its hold upon the popular imagination, might thenceforward have secularized his conduct, and paved the way in Court circles for that separation of Church and State which his ministers were itching to bring about but did not yet dare.
But John of Jingalo had all the defects which belong to a conscientious character. He had not gone to the play for amusement, it had not amused him, he did not at all agree with the public's attitude towards it, and yet he was reaping the benefit; he was standing in a glow of popular approbation under false pretenses; and the more he thought about it the less he liked it—it gave him a bad conscience.