very hour.

The king's bosom friend, the Minister of the Interior, Gran, who is
largely responsible for his liberalism, and whose whole policy it has
been to rejuvenate and revitalize the monarchy, is challenged and shot
by his old teacher, the Republican Flink; and the king himself,
convinced of the futility of all his efforts to realize his idea of a
democratic monarchy, commits suicide.

As a piece of sanguinary satire on royalty as an institution "The King"
is most interesting--that is, royalty logically and speculatively
considered, without reference to its historical basis and development.
To me the postulate that it had its origin in a kind of conspiracy (for
mutual benefit) of the priest and the king seems shallow and
unphilosophical. Bjoernson's fanatical partisanship has evidently carried
him a little too far. For surely he would himself admit that every free
nation is governed about as well as it deserves to be--that its
political institutions are a reflection of its maturity and capacity for
self-government. A certain allowance must, indeed, be made for the _vis
inertiae_ of whatever exists, which makes it exert a stubborn and not
unwholesome resistance to the reformer's zeal. This conservatism (which
may, however, have more laudable motives than mere self-interest)
Bjoernson has happily satirized in the scene before the Noblemen's Club
in the third act. But, I fancy, it looks to him only as a sinister
power, which for its own base purposes has smitten humanity with
blindness to its own welfare. Though not intending to enter into a
discussion, I am also tempted to put a respectful little interrogation
mark after the statement that the republic is so very much cheaper than
the monarchy. If the experience of the two largest republics in the
world counts for anything, I should say that in point of economy there
was not much to choose.

Strange as it may seem, Bjoernson did not intend "The King" as an
argument in favor of the republic. In his preface to the third edition
he distinctly repudiates the idea. The recent development of the
Norwegian people, has, he says, made the republic a remoter possibility
than it was ten years before (1875). But he qualifies this statement
with the significant condition, "If we are not checked by fraud." And I
fancy that he would have a perfect right to justify his present position
by demonstrating the fraud, trickery, if not treason, by which Norway
has during the last decad