"Now what you ought to do is--find out at what point it would break with all tradition for you to be really natural and think and act as an ordinary gentleman of sense and honor, and then--go and do it! The Government would roll its eyes in horror; the whole Court would be in commotion; but with the people generally you would win hands down!" "Max, you are tempting me!" said the King. "Sir," said his son, "I cannot express to you how great is my wish to be proud of your shoes if hereafter I have to step into them. Could you not just once, for my sake, do something that no Government would expect--just to disturb that general smugness of things which is to-day using the monarchy as its decoy?" The King gazed upon the handsome youth with eyes of hunger and affection. "What is it that you want me to do?" he inquired. Max held out his cigar at arm's length, looked at it reflectively, and flicked off the ash. "Don't do that on the carpet!" said his father. Max smiled. "That is so like you, father," he said; "yes, that is you all over. You don't like to give trouble even to the housemaid. Now when you see things going wrong you ought to give trouble--serious trouble, I mean. You ought, in vulgar phrase, to 'do a bust.' "When I was a small boy," he went on, "I used to read fairy stories and look at pictures. And there was one that I have always remembered of a swan with a crown round its neck floating along a stream with its beak wide open, singing its last song. To me that picture has ever since represented the institution of monarchy going to its death. The crown, too large and heavy to remain in place, has slipped down from its head and settled like a collar or yoke about its neck. Its head, in consequence, is free, and it begins to sing its 'Nunc dimittis.' The question to me is--what 'Nunc dimittis' are we going to sing? I do not know whether you ever read English poetry; but some lines of Tennyson run in my head; let me, if I can remember, repeat them now-- "'The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full, and clear; And floating about the under-sky, Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear; But anon her awful jubilant voice, With a music strange and manifold, Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold; As when a mighty people rejoice With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold!' "That, my dear father, is the song I wish to hear you singing--that I want to take up, I in my turn after you. I want your voice now to be awful and jubilant, and your carol to be 'free and bold' like the carol of that dying bird; and the sound of it to be like the rejoicing of a mighty people on a day of festival." The King shook his head. "My dear boy," he said, "I don't understand poetry; I never did."