The king lit a cheroot and replied in an anecdotal tone:
“When I was your age, Ernie, I had a beautiful set of whiskers and a still more beautiful set of ideals about the sanctity of my position and all that. I still have the whiskers. My dear old father suggested that I grow the whiskers. ‘You haven’t much of a chin,’ he said to me. ‘I think you’d better keep your loyal subjects in the dark about that. A king can be human, but not too damn human. Also, there’s another reason—whiskery men all look pretty much alike.’ I did not understand then what he was talking about; but many years later, after his death, I did. I was scheduled to go to some dismal provincial town and knight some pestilential bounder of a mayor. I’d been performing a lot of royal chores, including the coronation mumbo-jumbo, and I was a bit fed up. The more I thought of going to that town the more bored I grew. But of course I had to go. Was I not a king? I took myself and my duties terribly seriously, even as you do, Ernie.”
The king unashed his cheroot in a gold tray and went on:
“Yes, I felt that only a king full of blue blood could possibly knight a fellow properly. However, on the night before the ceremony I drank a magnum of champagne, and then made the strategic error of adding a few glasses of 1812 brandy. Alcohol is no respecter of royalty. In the morning I perceived that if I tried to knight the fellow I’d probably decapitate him. Here was a pretty kettle of whitebait. I was at my wit’s end when Lord Crockinghorse, my secretary, bobbed up with an idea. He’d had it on ice for some time, it appeared. He produced a whiskery blighter who opened oysters in a fried-fish shop; the fellow smelled most evilly of shellfish, but he looked exactly like me. In my condition at that time I could hardly tell him from myself. Crockinghorse coolly proposed that the whiskery oysterman should take my place. I was shocked inexpressibly. An oysterman substituting for a king! What a devastating and yet absurd thought! I felt just as you do now, Ernie.”
The king blew a smoke ring and continued:
“Well, Crockinghorse won his point, and we dressed up the whiskery blighter in my most garish uniform, told him if he said a syllable more than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ we’d murder him, and taught him a speech which went:
“ ‘My loyal subjects [pause for cheers] I am overcome by this reception. [Pause.] I can only say thank you, thank you, thank you.’ We packed him off in my pea-green uniform and next day the papers all said, ‘His Majesty performed his part in the ceremony with exceptional grace and dignity.’ ”
The prince in his bed moaned; the king, with a shrug, continued:
“Oh, I was all cut up for days! Felt deucedly unnecessary. But at last light dawned and the more I thought of the whole affair the more it entertained me. I ended by hiring the whiskery blighter at twenty-five goobecs a week, gave him a room in the palace near the kitchen and a lot of oysters to amuse himself with and whenever I got tired of kinging I trotted to Paris or somewhere incog and left the corner stone laying to my oyster friend. He became rather better at it than I. Oh, I had to do it, Ernie! If I hadn’t had a genuine vacation now and then I should have got squirrels in the cupola, absolutely.”
The prince had aged perceptibly during this recital. His voice quavered as he asked, “And where is the fellow now?”