“But what of the message?” the king asked, and none of his trumpeters could help him there, and he would have no unwilling service in his palace or in his kingdom, so he sent them all away. And as they went, little Peter looked after them, and he saw, and the king saw, that for all their purple velvet and lace collars, the thousand trumpeters, marching away fifty abreast, were not all men, but they were apes in manner and swine and hounds at heart. And little Peter almost wished that he could fashion them as he did his bits of mould and see if they would not change into something better. So then the king called a meeting of his High Council, and his councillors hurried into their robes of state and appeared on the grassy plateau when the evening was lighting the place to be a glory. “Lo, now,” said the king, “I needs must send a message to all my people. Let us devise or dream some way to take it.” When they heard the message, the councillors nodded, with their hands over their mouths, looking at the ground. Then the king said--there, in the beginning of the world:-- “I have a thought about a wire which shall reach round the earth and oversea and undersea, on which a man may send a message. And a thought I have about a wire which shall stretch across the land, and upon that wire a voice may travel alone. And a thought about messages that shall pierce the air with no wire and no voice. But none of these things is now.” (“Nay,” said the council, murmuring among themselves, “or ever shall be.”) “--and if they were,” said the king, “I would have one serve me even better than these, to reach the head and the heart of my people. How shall I do this thing? For I must have help in finishing my kingdom.” The council, stepping about in the slanting light, disputed the matter, group by group, but there lay nowhere, it seemed, a conclusion. “You yourselves,” the king cried at last, “who know well that the kingdom must be completed, you yourselves gather the people in multitudes together and tell them the message.” But at this the High Council twitched their robes of state and would have none of it. “Who would sit in the high places if we did _that_?” said they. So the king sent them all away, and little Peter, standing beside the king, looked after them. And he saw, and the king saw, how, under their robes of state, the High Council had not entirely stopped being ape and swine and hound and tiger and, early in the world as it was, still there seemed no great excuse for that. “Oh, sire,” said little Peter, “I wish I could play with them as I play with my bits of mould and loam and could turn them into something better and alive.” “Well said, little Peter,” replied the king, smiling sadly.