When they heard the message, the councillors nodded, with their hands over their mouths, looking at the ground.
Then the king said—there, in the beginning of the world:—
“I have a thought about a wire which shall reach round the earth and oversea and undersea, on which a man may send a message. And a thought I have about a wire which shall stretch across the land, and upon that wire a voice may travel alone. And a thought about messages that shall pierce the air with no wire and no voice. But none of these things is now.”
(“Nay,” said the council, murmuring among themselves, “or ever shall be.”)
“—and if they were,” said the king, “I would have one serve me even better than these, to reach the head and the heart of my people. How shall I do this thing? For I must have help in finishing my kingdom.”
The council, stepping about in the slanting light, disputed the matter, group by group, but there lay nowhere, it seemed, a conclusion.
“You yourselves,” the king cried at last, “who know well that the kingdom must be completed, you yourselves gather the people in multitudes together and tell them the message.”
But at this the High Council twitched their robes of state and would have none of it.
“Who would sit in the high places if we did that?” said they.
So the king sent them all away, and little Peter, standing beside the king, looked after them. And he saw, and the king saw, how, under their robes of state, the High Council had not entirely stopped being ape and swine and hound and tiger and, early in the world as it was, still there seemed no great excuse for that.