policy of his companion. 'In its broader form, sir,' said Firmin;
'I admit a certain plausibility in this project of Leblanc's, but
I feel that although it may be advisable to set up some sort of
general control for International affairs-a sort of Hague Court
with extended powers-that is no reason whatever for losing sight
of the principles of national and imperial autonomy.'
'Firmin,' said the king, 'I am going to set my brother kings a
good example.'
Firmin intimated a curiosity that veiled a dread.
'By chucking all that nonsense,' said the king.
He quickened his pace as Firmin, who was already a little out of
breath, betrayed a disposition to reply.
'I am going to chuck all that nonsense,' said the king, as Firmin
prepared to speak. 'I am going to fling my royalty and empire on
the table-and declare at once I don't mean to haggle. It's
haggling-about rights-has been the devil in human affairs,
for-always. Iam going to stop this nonsense.'
Firmin halted abruptly. 'But, sir!' he cried.
The king stopped six yards ahead of him and looked back at his
adviser's perspiring visage.
'Do you reallythink, Firmin, that Iam here as-as an infernal
politician to put my crown and my flag and my claims and so forth
in the way of peace? That little Frenchman is right. You know he
is right as well as I do. Those things are over. We-we kings
and rulers and representatives have been at the very heart of the
mischief. Of course we imply separation, and of course
separation means the threat of war, and of course the threat of
war means the accumulation of more and more atomic bombs. The old
game's up. But, I say, we mustn't stand here, you know. The
world waits. Don't you think the old game's up, Firmin?'
Firmin adjusted a strap, passed a hand over his wet forehead, and
followed earnestly. 'I admit, sir,' he said to a receding back,
'that there has to be some sort of hegemony, some sort of
Amphictyonic council--'
'There's got to be one simple government for all the world,' said
the king over his shoulder.
'But as for a reckless, unqualified abandonment, sir--'
'BANG!' cried the king.
Firmin made no answer to this interruption. But a faint shadow
of annoyance passed across his heated features.
'Yesterday,' said the king, by way of explanation, 'the Japanese
very nearly got San Francisco.'
'I hadn't heard, sir.'
'The Americans ran the Japanese aeroplane down into the sea and
there the bomb got busted.'
'Under the sea, sir?'
'Yes. Submarine volcano. The steam is in sight of the
Californian coast. It was as near as that. And with things like
this happening, you want me to go up this hill and haggle.
Consider the effect of that upon my imperial cousin-and all the
others!'
'HE will haggle, sir.'
'Not a bit of it,' said the king.
'But, sir.'
'Leblanc won't let him.'
Firmin halted abruptly and gave a vicious pull at the offending
strap. 'Sir, he will listen to his advisers,' he said, in a tone
that in some subtle way seemed to implicate his master with the
trouble of the knapsack.
The king considered him.
'We will go just a little higher,' he said. 'I want to find this
unoccupied village they spoke of, and then we will drink that
beer. It can't be far. We will drink the beer and throw away the
bottles. And then, Firmin, I shall ask you to look at things in a
more generous light… Because, you know, you must…'
He turned about and for some time the only sound they made was
the noise of their boots upon the loose stones of the way and the
irregular breathing of Firmin.
At length, as it seemed to Firmin, or quite soon, as it seemed to
the king, the gradient of the path diminished, the way widened
out, and they found themselves in a very beautiful place indeed.
It was one of those upland clusters of sheds and houses that are
still to be found in the mountains of North Italy, buildings that
were used only in the high summer, and which it was the custom to
leave locked up and deserted through all the winter and spring,
and up to the middle of June. The buildings were of a soft-toned
gray stone, buried in rich green grass, shadowed by chestnut
trees and lit by an extraordinary blaze of yellow broom. Never
had the king seen broom so glorious; he shouted at the light of
it, for it seemed to give out more sunlight even than it
received; he sat down impulsively on a lichenous stone, tugged
out his bread and cheese, and bade Firmin thrust the beer into
the shaded weeds to cool.
'The things people miss, Firmin,' he said, 'who go up into the
air in ships!'
Firmin looked around him with an ungenial eye. 'You see it at
its best, sir,' he said, 'before the peasants come here again and
make it filthy.'
'It would be beautiful anyhow,' said the king.
'Superficially, sir,' said Firmin. 'But it stands for a social
order that is fast vanishing away. Indeed, judging by the grass
between the stones and in the huts, Iam inclined to doubt if it
is in use even now.'
'I suppose,' said the king, 'they would come up immediately the
hay on this flower meadow is cut. It would be those slow,
creamy-coloured beasts, I expect, one sees on the roads below,
and swarthy girls with red handkerchiefs over their black
hair… It is wonderful to think how long that beautiful old
life lasted. In the Roman times and long ages before ever the
rumour of the Romans had come into these parts, men drove their
cattle up into these places as the summer came on… How haunted
is this place! There have been quarrels here, hopes, children
have played here and lived to be old crones and old gaffers, and
died, and so it has gone on for thousands of lives. Lovers,
innumerable lovers, have caressed amidst this golden broom…'
He meditated over a busy mouthful of bread and cheese.
'We ought to have brought a tankard for that beer,' he said.
Firmin produced a folding aluminium cup, and the king was pleased
to drink.
'I wish, sir,' said Firmin suddenly, 'I could induce you at least
to delay your decision--'
'It's no good talking, Firmin,' said the king. 'My mind's as
clear as daylight.'
'Sire,' protested Firmin, with his voice full of bread and cheese
and genuine emotion, 'have you no respect for your kingship?'
The king paused before he answered with unwonted gravity. 'It's
just because I have, Firmin, that I won't be a puppet in this
game of international politics.' He regarded his companion for a
moment and then remarked: 'Kingship!-what do YOU know of
kingship, Firmin?
'Yes,' cried the king to his astonished counsellor. 'For the
first time in my life Iam going to be a king. Iam going to
lead, and lead by my own authority. For a dozen generations my
family has been a set of dummies in the hands of th
eir advisers.
Advisers! Now Iam going to be a real king-and Iam going
to-to abolish, dispose of, finish, the crown to which I have
been a slave. But what a world of paralysing shams this roaring
stuff has ended! The rigid old world is in the melting-pot again,
and I, who seemed to be no more than the stuffing inside a regal
robe, Iam a king among kings. I have to play my part at the head
of things and put an end to blood and fire and idiot disorder.'
'But, sir,' protested Firmin.
'This man Leblanc is right. The whole world has got to be a
Republic, one and indivisible. You know that, and my duty is to
make that easy. A king should lead his people; you want me to
stick on their backs like some Old Man of the Sea. To-day must
be a sacrament of kings. Our trust for mankind is done with and
ended. We must part our robes among them, we must part our
kingship among them, and say to them all, now the king in every
one must rule the world… Have you no sense of the magnificence
of this occasion? You want me, Firmin, you want me to go up
there and haggle like a damned little solicitor for some price,
some compensation, some qualification…'
Firmin shrugged his shoulders and assumed an expression of
despair. Meanwhile, he conveyed, one must eat.
For a time neither spoke, and the king ate and turned over in his
mind the phrases of the speech he intended to make to the
conference. By virtue of the antiquity of his crown he was to
preside, and he intended to make his presidency memorable.
Reassured of his eloquence, he considered the despondent and
sulky Firmin for a space.
'Firmin,' he said, 'you have idealised kingship.' 'It has been
my dream, sir,' said Firmin sorrowfully, 'to serve.'
'At the levers, Firmin,' said the king.
'You are pleased to be unjust,' said Firmin, deeply hurt.
'I am pleased to be getting out of it,' said the king.
'Oh, Firmin,' he went on, 'have you no thought for me? Will you
never realise that Iam not only flesh and blood but an
imagination-with its rights. Iam a king in revolt against that
fetter they put upon my head. Iam a king awake. My reverend
grandparents never in all their august lives had a waking moment.
They loved the job that you, you advisers, gave them; they never
had a doubt of it. It was like giving a doll to a woman who ought
to have a child. They delighted in processions and opening things
and being read addresses to, and visiting triplets and
nonagenarians and all that sort of thing. Incredibly. They used
to keep albums of cuttings from all the illustrated papers
showing them at it, and if the press-cutting parcels grew thin
they were worried. It was all that ever worried them. But there
is something atavistic in me; I hark back to unconstitutional
monarchs. They christened me too retrogressively, I think. I
wanted to get things done. I was bored. I might have fallen into
vice, most intelligent and energetic princes do, but the palace
precautions were unusually thorough. I was brought up in the
purest court the world has ever seen… Alertly pure… So I
read books, Firmin, and went about asking questions. The thing
was bound to happen to one of us sooner or later. Perhaps, too,
very likely I'm not vicious. I don't thinkIam.'
He reflected. 'No,' he said.
Firmin cleared his throat. 'I don't think you are, sir,' he
said. 'You prefer--'
He stopped short. He had been going to say 'talking.' He
substituted 'ideas.'
'That world of royalty!' the king went on. 'In a little while no
one will understand it any more. It will become a riddle…
'Among other things, it was a world of perpetual best clothes.
Everything was in its best clothes for us, and usually wearing
bunting. With a cinema watching to see we took it properly. If
you are a king, Firmin, and you go and look at a regiment, it
instantly stops whatever it is doing, changes into full uniform
and presents arms. When my august parents went in a train the
coal in the tender used to be whitened. It did, Firmin, and if
coal had been white instead of black I have no doubt the
authorities would have blackened it. That was the spirit of our
treatment. People were always walking about with their faces to
us. One never saw anything in profile. One got an impression of
a world that was insanely focused on ourselves. And when I began
to poke my little questions into the Lord Chancellor and the
archbishop and all the rest of them, about what I should see if
people turned round, the general effect I produced was that I
wasn't by any means displaying the Royal Tact they had expected
of me…'
He meditated for a time.
'And yet, you know, there is something in the kingship, Firmin.
It stiffened up my august little grandfather. It gave my
grandmother a kind of awkward dignity even when she was
cross-and she was very often cross. They both had a profound
sense of responsibility. My poor father's health was wretched
during his brief career; nobody outside the circle knows just how
he screwed himself up to things. "My people expect it," he used
to say of this tiresome duty or that. Most of the things they
made him do were silly-it was part of a bad tradition, but there
was nothing silly in the way he set about them… The spirit of
kingship is a fine thing, Firmin; I feel it in my bones; I do not
people, Firmin, and you couldn't. No, don't say you could die for
me, because I know better. Don't think I forget my kingship,
Firmin, don't imagine that. Iam a king, a kingly king, by right
divine. The fact that Iam also a chattering young man makes not
the slightest difference to that. But the proper text-book for
kings, Firmin, is none of the court memoirs and Welt-Politik
books you would have me read; it is old Fraser's Golden Bough.
Have you read that, Firmin?'
Firmin had. 'Those were the authentic kings. In the end they
were cut up and a bit given to everybody. They sprinkled the
nations-with Kingship.'
Firmin turned himself round and faced his royal master.
'What do you intend to do, sir?' he asked. 'If you will not
listen to me, what do you propose to do this afternoon?'
The king flicked crumbs from his coat.
'Manifestly war has to stop for ever, Firmin. Manifestly this
can only be done by putting all the world under one government.
Our crowns and flags are in the way. Manifestly they must go.'
'Yes, sir,' interrupted Firmin, 'but WHAT government? I don't see
what government you get by a universal abdication!'
'Well,' said the king, with his hands about his knees, 'WE shall
be the government.'
'The conference?' exclaimed Firmin.
'Who else?' asked the king simply.
'It's perfectly simple,' he added to Firmin's tremendous silence.
'But,' cried Firmin, 'you must have sanctions! Will there be no
form of elec
tion, for example?'
'Why should there be?' asked the king, with intelligent
curiosity.
'The consent of the governed.'
'Firmin, we are just going to lay down our differences and take
over government. Without any election at all. Without any
sanction. The governed will show their consent by silence. If
any effective opposition arises we shall ask it to come in and
help. The true sanction of kingship is the grip upon the sceptre.
We aren't going to worry people to vote for us. I'm certain the
mass of men does not want to be bothered with such things…
We'll contrive a way for any one interested to join in. That's
quite enough in the way of democracy. Perhaps later-when things
don't matter… We shall govern all right, Firmin. Government
only becomes difficult when the lawyers get hold of it, and since
these troubles began the lawyers are shy. Indeed, come to think
of it, I wonder where all the lawyers are… Where are they? A
lot, of course, were bagged, some of the worst ones, when they
blew up my legislature. You never knew the late Lord Chancellor.
…
'Necessities bury rights. And create them. Lawyers live on dead
rights disinterred… We've done with that way of living. We
won't have more law than a code can cover and beyond that
government will be free…
'Before the sun sets to-day, Firmin, trust me, we shall have made
our abdications, all of us, and declared the World Republic,
supreme and indivisible. I wonder what my august grandmother
would have made of it! All my rights!… And then we shall go
on governing. What else is there to do? All over the world we
shall declare that there is no longer mine or thine, but ours.
China, the United States, two-thirds of Europe, will certainly
fall in and obey. They will have to do so. What else can they
do? Their official rulers are here with us. They won't be able
to get together any sort of idea of not obeying us… Then we
shall declare that every sort of property is held in trust for
the Republic…'
'But, sir!' cried Firmin, suddenly enlightened. 'Has this been
arranged already?'
'My dear Firmin, do you think we have come here, all of us, to
talk at large? The talking has been done for half a century.
Talking and writing. We are here to set the new thing, the
simple, obvious, necessary thing, going.'
He stood up.