He was not to be allowed to fight.
The decision whether he should fight for his place, step to one side, or fall out, altogether, to the rear, had been taken out of his hands.
The desire for self-assertion, for self-expression, which he had felt, so strongly, only an hour or two previously, flamed up, hotly, anew, within the King. An unwilling King, a half-hearted King, he might be; but to be a nonentity, a man of no account—
The very workman, the individual workman, who—in less than an hour now—as the clock struck twelve, would lay down his tools, put on his coat, and leave his work, was of more account than he was!
Ignorant, and deceived, as he might be, the individual workman, in striking, would be asserting himself, expressing himself.
And he?
He could not even strike!
If only he could have gone on strike!
The fantastic idea caught the King's fevered fancy. It was in tune with the bitter, wilful, rebellious mood which had swept over him. He could not resist the temptation of giving it ironic expression.
"It seems to me, if there is one man, in the whole country, who would be justified in striking, in leaving his work, I am that man!" he exclaimed. "I never wanted, I never expected to have to fill—my present command. To be 'a sailor, not a Prince,' was always my idea. Do people, do these people, who are coming out on strike, and hope to run up the Red Flag, imagine that I get any pleasure, that I get anything but weariness, out of—my place in the procession? If I followed my own wishes now—I should strike, too! I should be the reddest revolutionary of them all. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity is their war cry, isn't it? Those are the very things I want!"