The King of a certain country, whose power was absolute and whose will was despotic, issued an edict that all the laborers of his dominion who were engaged in honorable toil should exchange places with those persons who did no work or were engaged in dishonorable or merely speculative avocations, so that the laboring man should fare sumptuously and the non-laborer poorly. Those who worked up in the sunlight on the tall buildings should sit down in the evening to bountiful banquets and should sleep in fine linen on luxurious couches; while those who crawled below in the bleak valleys between the beetling cliffs of architecture should go to frugal meals and sleep amid the rough surroundings of the abodes of the poor. The monarch reasoned that those who did the world's work were more deserving of the good things of the world than were the idle or the vicious, however wealthy. He imagined that the world was turned upside down socially and economically, and he proposed to turn it back again by his royal fiat. Backed by his sword, "which is the badge of temporal power wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings," he apprehended no failure in his plans, which had been worked out in their minutest detail. His army was the largest of any nation, and was to a man devoted to its King. His genius had won many victories and extended the borders of glory. Through his impartial system of promotion men from the ranks had risen to be commanders. The soldiery were well fed, well housed, and well paid. A word, a nod, from their King would set in motion this mighty machine to crush out all opposition. Supplementing the military arm of his government the King had organized the most elaborate system of _espionage_, so that all secrets were open to him, and no whisperings in the street or the club but were conveyed distinctly to his royal ear by the microphone of his spy system. The press was gagged or inspired; the legislature was composed of fawning sycophants; his judiciary was merely a reflection of the royal will; and Holy Church itself displayed its purple robe and golden bowl but to ornament his processions or to hallow his feasts.