ere decorating and illuminations preparing, ministers were
giving his Majesty a thoroughly bad time.

In a way, of course, he brought it upon himself, for at the very next
Council meeting after his conversation with Max he did a thing which, so
far as his own reign was concerned, was absolutely without precedent: he
opened his mouth and spoke;--objected, contended, argued. And at the
sound of his voice uttering something more than mere formalities,
ministers sat up amazed, most of them very angry and scandalized at so
unexpected a reversion to the constitutional usages of a previous
generation.

Not a word of all this leaked out. The whole thing was an admirable
example of that keeping-up of appearances on which bureaucratic
government so largely depends. And it was, if you come to think of it, a
very deftly arranged affair. There was the whole country bobbing with
loyalty, enthusiasm, and commercial opportunism; the Cabinet
unencumbered for a while by any parliamentary situation that could cause
anxiety, and correspondingly free to direct its energies elsewhere; and
there within the Council, and without a soul to advise him, was the
King, scuffling confusedly against the predatory devices of his
ministers. The poor man's knowledge of the Constitution was but scanty,
and his powers of argument were feeble, for from the day of his
accession the word "precedent" had governed him. Yet he had an idea, a
feeling, that he was now being forced into a wrong position; the
constitutional breath was being beaten out of his body, and he would
pass from his levees, from his receptions of foreign embassies and
addresses of loyalty and congratulation, to a conflict in Council which
reminded him of nothing so much as a "scrum" upon the football field.
Through one goal or another he was to be kicked--the exercise of the
Crown's prerogative to nominate Free Church Bishops, or the refusal to
exercise it. And whichever expedient he was driven to in the end, he
knew that on one side grandiloquent words would be written about his
fine instinct for the constitutional limitations or powers of monarchy,
and on the other, pained, but deeply respectful words of regret that he
had been so ill-advised by his ministers--or by others. Whichever side
loses, it is the football which wins the game. That, however, is merely
the spectator's point of view. The football only knows that it has been
kicked. Yet the King was well aware that in Parliament at a