“Really,” said Ferdinand Augustus, “I cannot see that you have alleged anything very damaging. A Roi Fainéant? But every king of a modern constitutional state is, willy-nilly, that. He can do nothing but sign bills which he generally disapproves of, lay foundation-stones, set the fashion in hats, and bow and look pleasant as he drives through the streets. He has no power for good, and mighty little for evil. He is just a State Prisoner. It seems to me that your particular King has shown some sense in trying to escape so much as he may of the prison’s irksomeness. I should call it rare bad luck to be born a king. Either you’ve got to shirk your kingship, and then fair ladies dub you the scandal of Europe; or else you’ve got to accept it, and then you’re as happy as a man in a strait-waistcoat. And then, and then! Oh, I can think of a thousand unpleasantnesses attendant upon the condition of a king. Your King, as I understand it, has said to himself, ’Hang it all, I didn’t ask to be born a king, but since that is my misfortune, I will seek to mitigate it as much as I am able. I am, on the whole, a human being, with a human life to live, and only, probably, threescore-and-ten years in which to live it. Very good; I will live my life. I will lay no foundation-stones, nor drive about the streets bowing and looking pleasant. I will live my life, alone with the few people I find to my liking. I will take the cash and let the credit go.’ I am bound to say,” concluded Ferdinand Augustus, “that your King has done exactly what I should have done in his place.” “You will never, at least,” said she, “defend the shameful manner in which he has behaved towards the Queen. It is for that, I hate him. It is for that, that we, the Queen’s gentlewomen, have adopted ’7’ is a weary day as a watchword. It will be a weary day until we see the King on his knees at the Queen’s feet, craving her forgiveness.” “Oh? What has he done to the Queen?” asked Ferdinand. “What has he done! Humiliated her as never woman was humiliated before. He married her by proxy at her father’s court; and she was conducted with great pomp and circumstance into his kingdom—to find what? That he had fled to one of his absurd castles in the north, and refused to see her! He has remained there ever since, hiding like—but there is nothing in created space to compare him to. Is it the behaviour of a gentleman, of a gallant man, not to say a king?” she cried warmly, looking up at him with shining eyes, her cheeks faintly flushed.