ement when on occasion it became necessary to circumvent or reduce
to reason the King's characteristic obstinacy in small matters of
detail. He might, in fact, be regarded as the keeper not so much of the
King's conscience, as of his savoir faire, and of that tact for which
Royalty in all countries is conspicuous. Everything that related to the
remembering of names and faces, of dates, anniversaries and historical
associations, all those small considerate actions of royal charity which
robbed of their due privacy have now become the perquisite of the press;
all these things stood ranged under minutely tabulated heads within the
Comptroller-General's department. He was, literally, the King's
Remembrancer; and so, on this occasion also, he had come as intermediary
to remind his Majesty that the hour for the Council was at hand.

But the Council was one of those functions in which it was held
necessary that the part played by the King (albeit no more than a silent
presidency at a Board where others spoke) should wear an appearance of
importance. And so the announcement made by the Comptroller was merely
preliminary to another and more flourishing announcement by an usher of
the Court. Two lackeys threw open a door--other than that through which
the General had just entered, and a bowing official, beautifully dressed
and waving a fairy-like wand, announced from the threshold, "Your
Majesty's Council, now in attendance, humbly begs audience of your
Majesty."

III

Then followed a pause. The Comptroller-General with head deferentially
bent waited to catch the royal eye. The King graciously allowed his
royal eye to be caught; and the Comptroller-General, interpreting the
silent consent of that glance, uttered with due solemnity the
traditional form of words indicative of the royal pleasure. "His Majesty
hears," he lowed in the correct "palace accent": and the usher bowed and
retired.

All this helped, of course, to make the act of presiding in Council seem
highly important and consequential to any monarch susceptible to
ceremonial flattery. Whether it had originally been so devised may be
questioned, for monarchs of old had needed no such ceremonial backing to
their very practical incursions into ministerial debate. What we have to
notice is that the ceremony had survived, while the other thing--the
practice of substantial interference--had become obsolete.

The King passed from his private apartments to broad corridors