The King laughed.
“No—I cannot say that it is! But thought is a tonic which sometimes restores a man’s enfeebled self-respect. I was beginning to lose that particular condition of health and sanity, Roger!—my self-respect was becoming a flaccid muscle—a withering nerve;—but a little thought-exercise has convinced me that my mental sinews are yet on the whole strong!”
Sir Roger offered no reply. His eyes expressed a certain languid wonderment; but duty being paramount with him, and his immediate errand being to remind his sovereign of an appointment then about due, he began to collect the writing materials scattered about on the table and put them together for convenient removal. The smile on the King’s face deepened as he watched him.
“You do not answer me, De Launay,”—he resumed, “You think perhaps that I am talking in parables, and that my mind has been persuaded into a metaphysical and rambling condition by an hour’s contemplation of the sunlight on the sea! But come now!—have you not yourself felt a longing to break loose from the trammels of conventional routine,—to be set free from the slavery of answering another’s beck and call,—to be something more than my attendant and friend——”
“Sir, more than your friend I have never desired to be!” said Sir Roger, simply.
The King extended his hand with impulsive quickness, and Sir Roger as he clasped it, bent low and touched it with his lips. There was no parasitical homage in the act, for De Launay loved his sovereign with a love little known at courts; loyally, faithfully, and without a particle of self-seeking. He had long recognized the nobility, truth and courage which graced and tempered the disposition of the master he served, and knew him to be one, if not the only, monarch in the world likely to confer some lasting benefit on his people by his reign.
“I tell you,” pursued the King, “that there is something in the mortal composition of every man which is beyond mortality, something which clamours to be heard, and seen, and proved. We may call it conscience, intellect, spirit or soul, and attribute its existence, to God, as a spark of the Divine Essence, but whatever it is, it is in every one of us; and there comes a moment in life when it must flame out, or be quenched forever. That moment has come to me, Roger,—that something in me must have its way!”
“Your Majesty no doubt desires the impossible!”—said Sir Roger with a smile, “All men do,—even kings!”
“‘Even kings!’” echoed the monarch—“You may well say ‘even’ kings! What are kings? Simply the most wronged and miserable men on earth! I do not myself put in a special claim for pity. My realm is small, and my people are, for aught I can learn or am told of them, contented. But other sovereigns who are my friends and neighbours, live, as it were, under the dagger’s point,—with dynamite at their feet and pistols at their heads,—all for no fault of their own, but for the faults of a system which they did not formulate. Conspirators on the threshold—poison in the air,—as in Russia, for example!—where is the joy or the pride of being a King nowadays?”
“Talking of poison,” said Sir Roger blandly, as he placed the last document of those he had collected, neatly in a leather case and strapped it—“Your Majesty may perhaps feel inclined to defer giving the promised audience to Monsignor Del Fords of the Society of Jesus?”