Having looked at his watch the King said: "My dear, what are you going to do to-day?" "Really," replied the Queen, "I don't quite know; I have not yet looked at my diary." Her Majesty seldom did know anything of the day's program until she had consulted her secretaries, who, with dovetailing ingenuity, arranged her hours and booked to each day--often many months in advance--the engagements which lay ahead. Therein she showed a calmer and more philosophic temperament than her consort. The King always knew; every day of his life with anxious forecast he consulted his diary while shaving, and breakfasted with its troubling details fresh upon his recollection. Having answered his inquiry the Queen relapsed into her correspondence, while the King resumed his newspaper; and the moment may be regarded as propitious for presenting the reader with a portrait of these two august personages, since so good an opportunity may not occur again. The kind of portrait we offer is, of course, of an up-to-date and biographical character, and does not limit itself to those circumstances of time and space in which the commencement of this history has landed us. So, first, we take the King,--not as we have just found him, seated at a table with chair turned sideways and features sharply illuminated by the reflected lights of the journal he holds in his hands--for thus we do not see him to advantage, and it is to advantage that we would exhibit in its externals a character of which, before we have done with it, we intend to grow fond. Time and space must provide us with a broader view of him than that. This King had been upon the throne for twenty-five years; and during that period, like a rich wine in the wood, monarchy had mellowed within him, permeating his system with its mild and slightly dry flavor; it had become as it were a habit, and he carried it quite naturally, almost unconsciously, though with just a suspicion of weight, much as a scholar carries his learning or a workman his bag of tools.