Here was a play on the very eve of production, reeking with the sniggering improprieties which the keeper of the King's conscience had permitted to become the popular vogue. Suggestions and innuendoes to which the ordinary theater-going public had now grown accustomed, struck his inexperienced Majesty as bold and glaring novelties. The mere cheapness of the wit he passed uncritically by, but the indecencies were so bare and bald that even he, with all his innocence and inexperience, could not fail to understand them. The explanation, of course, was easy; this new version of an old and accepted play had received the official sanction through oversight. Providence had sent him to the rescue in the nick of time; and delighted to have found something which his hand really could do, he took up the blue pencil and set to work. Snatches of dialogue, half lines of lyric--especially when it came to the last verse--here, there, and everywhere he scored them through with a ruthless hand; and with a renewed sense of usefulness, and a conscience well at ease, he returned the much deleted copy to the Lord Functionary. Before long that official visited him, presenting a grave countenance. He was by no means enthusiastic over the royal handiwork; the production was about to take place; the play had already practically been licensed--silence up to so late a moment having virtually given consent; and--most difficult point of all--these things which the King was now ruling out had almost all of them been in the previously accepted version. "Then I suppose," said his Majesty, "that nobody really reads the plays?" "Oh, yes, sir, they are always read," corrected the Lord Functionary, "but our readers have necessarily to go upon certain lines. They are guided by precedent and custom, which it would be highly inadvisable to disturb." So he pleaded that the _status quo ante_ might prevail; and yet, man to man, he could not defend what the King showed him. "Could you," inquired his Majesty indignantly, "read such things aloud to your own family? Could you comfortably, if I called upon you to do so, read them aloud to me?" "The drama," explained the Lord Functionary, "is so different from anything else; it has not to observe the same conventions. In light comedy, especially, these things really do not count. People never trouble to think about them--they mean nothing." "In that case," said the King, "no one will mind your cutting them out." The Lord Functionary seemed not so sure,--his assurance went, in fact, in quite an opposite direction. He pleaded hard for the trade interests which he stood to represent. The play was in an advanced state of rehearsal; many thousands had been spent upon it; and, seeing that it was but a revival, no doubt about the new version passing had existed anywhere. But to all his entreaties the King remained adamant. "In this matter," said he, "you have to consult my conscience." The point could not be further argued.