ful homage to the throne from
both sides, the truce came to an end and the signal for fight was given.
More important to Prince Max was the fact that it had revealed to him a
certain lady's identity.

CHAPTER X

KING AND COUNCIL

I

During the weeks of the Jubilee recess the King had spent his spare
moments in taking notes, and priming himself on fresh points of
constitutional usage.

The Comptroller-General was greatly puzzled to see writing going on day
after day in which neither he nor any of the secretaries were invited to
take part. He was more puzzled still when, by means available to him,
he obtained access to what the King had actually written.

After a single reading he felt it his duty to report to the Prime
Minister.

"He seems to be writing a history of the Constitution," said the
General. "Where he gets his facts from I don't know, but they don't seem
to have come from you; quite the other side I should say."

On this note-taking, so voluminous that it resembled the writing of a
history, the King was getting into his stride, and was discovering how
very much better all these years he could have made his own speeches,
had he only been allowed to. He had within him the gift of expression,
though not the power of condensing it; he had industry, a good case, and
now at last behind his back an unimpeachable authority. And so, at its
next meeting he came down into Council stuffed full of facts and
phrases, and quite determined that before things went any further his
Ministry should hear them.

The constitutional crisis had reached a head as soon as Parliament again
met. The defiant action of the Bishops had thrown the Government's
program so much into arrears that a drastic quickening of the pace had
become necessary; and if, in spite of scare and warning, the Bishops
meant to go on doing as they had hitherto done it was evident that their
constitutional powers must be limited. The Archimandrite and the Free
Churchmen between them might supply the Government with a bare working
majority; but that alone would not be sufficient to make legislation
fruitful between then and the next general election. Unless the
Government, after striking the blow, could come before the country
bearing its sheaves with it, there was a very serious chance that its
patriotic intention of continuing in power would be frustrated; and even
a Government busily engaged in marking time to suit its own bureaucratic
in