.. Have you no sense of the
magnificence of this occasion? You want me, Firmin, you want me to go
up there and haggle like a damned little solicitor for some price, some
compensation, some qualification....'

Firmin shrugged his shoulders and assumed an expression of despair.
Meanwhile, he conveyed, one must eat.

For a time neither spoke, and the king ate and turned over in his mind
the phrases of the speech he intended to make to the conference. By
virtue of the antiquity of his crown he was to preside, and he intended
to make his presidency memorable. Reassured of his eloquence, he
considered the despondent and sulky Firmin for a space.

'Firmin,' he said, 'you have idealised kingship.' 'It has been my dream,
sir,' said Firmin sorrowfully, 'to serve.'

'At the levers, Firmin,' said the king.

'You are pleased to be unjust,' said Firmin, deeply hurt.

'I am pleased to be getting out of it,' said the king.

'Oh, Firmin,' he went on, 'have you no thought for me? Will you never
realise that I am not only flesh and blood but an imagination--with its
rights. I am a king in revolt against that fetter they put upon my head.
I am a king awake. My reverend grandparents never in all their august
lives had a waking moment. They loved the job that you, you advisers,
gave them; they never had a doubt of it. It was like giving a doll to
a woman who ought to have a child. They delighted in processions and
opening things and being read addresses to, and visiting triplets and
nonagenarians and all that sort of thing. Incredibly. They used to keep
albums of cuttings from all the illustrated papers showing them at it,
and if the press-cutting parcels grew thin they were worried. It was all
that ever worried them. But there is something atavistic in me; I
hark back to unconstitutional monarchs. They christened me too
retrogressively, I think. I wanted to get things done. I was bored. I
might have fallen into vice, most intelligent and energetic princes do,
but the palace precautions were unusually thorough. I was brought up in
the purest court the world has ever seen. . . . Alertly pure.... So I
read books, Firmin, and went about asking questions. The thing was bound
to happen to one of us sooner or later. Perhaps, too, very likely I'm
not vicious. I don't think I am.'

He reflected. 'No,' he said.

Firmin cleared his throat. 'I don't think you are, sir,' he said. 'You
prefer----'

He stopped short. He had been going to say '