but popular play during the
penitential season and it had got into the papers. But instead of being
blamed for it he had gained enormously in popularity.

Now had his Majesty been merely aiming for this, as politicians aim for
it (deserting principles for party, or party when its principles become
a hindrance), he might have followed the lead given him by the people of
Jingalo, and, recognizing that the Church Calendar had lost its hold
upon the popular imagination, might thenceforward have secularized his
conduct, and paved the way in Court circles for that separation of
Church and State which his ministers were itching to bring about but did
not yet dare.

But John of Jingalo had all the defects which belong to a conscientious
character. He had not gone to the play for amusement, it had not amused
him, he did not at all agree with the public's attitude towards it, and
yet he was reaping the benefit; he was standing in a glow of popular
approbation under false pretenses; and the more he thought about it the
less he liked it--it gave him a bad conscience.

Yet, in spite of that, he could not but recognize that he had touched
power; under a misapprehension the people had responded to him as never
before; he had done what they regarded as a sporting thing in sending
unpopular officialdom to the right-about; it was even possible that
among theatrical circles when the exploit was talked of he was now known
as "good old King Jack." All the same he did not feel that he had been
good, and he wanted to make amends.

The highly colored conversations of Max, the talk about whipping-boys
and Court jesters, and all those ancient divinities which had once
hedged a King but were now mere barbed wire entanglements, had turned
his attention toward certain medieval institutions the practice of which
had lapsed, or had become reduced to a mere shadow of their former
selves. And with a conscience ill at ease over the damage he had wrought
to a season which he still regarded with a certain conventional
reverence, his thoughts lighted upon Maundy Thursday, then less than a
fortnight off.

He remembered having once watched from a private gallery in the royal
chapel the impoverished ceremony which now did shabby duty for the old
symbol of kingly humility and service. He had seen the vicarious
sacrifice of silver pennies doled out by his almoners to a duplicated
dozen of old men and women who had lost their better days in
circumstances o