However, it was not good politics to let the king
come without any fuss and feathers at all, so I went
down and drummed up a procession of pilgrims and smoked
out a batch of hermits and started them out at two
o’clock to meet him. And that was the
sort of state he arrived in. The abbot was helpless
with rage and humiliation when I brought him out on
a balcony and showed him the head of the state marching
in and never a monk on hand to offer him welcome,
and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to glad his
spirit. He took one look and then flew to rouse
out his forces. The next minute the bells were
dinning furiously, and the various buildings were
vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in a rush
toward the coming procession; and with them went that
magician —and he was on a rail, too, by
the abbot’s order; and his reputation was in
the mud, and mine was in the sky again. Yes,
a man can keep his trademark current in such a country,
but he can’t sit around and do it; he has got
to be on deck and attending to business right along.
CHAPTER XXV
A COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION
When the king traveled for change of air, or made
a progress, or visited a distant noble whom he wished
to bankrupt with the cost of his keep, part of the
administration moved with him. It was a fashion
of the time. The Commission charged with the
examination of candidates for posts in the army came
with the king to the Valley, whereas they could have
transacted their business just as well at home.
And although this expedition was strictly a holiday
excursion for the king, he kept some of his business
functions going just the same. He touched for
the evil, as usual; he held court in the gate at sunrise
and tried cases, for he was himself Chief Justice
of the King’s Bench.
He shone very well in this latter office. He
was a wise and humane judge, and he clearly did his
honest best and fairest,—according to his
lights. That is a large reservation. His
lights—I mean his rearing—often
colored his decisions. Whenever there was a
dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of
lower degree, the king’s leanings and sympathies
were for the former class always, whether he suspected
it or not. It was impossible that this should
be otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery
upon the slaveholder’s moral perceptions are
known and conceded, the world over; and a privileged
class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders
under another name. This has a harsh sound, and
yet should not be offensive to any—even
to the noble himself—unless the fact itself
be an offense: for the statement simply formulates
a fact. The repulsive feature of slavery is the
thing, not its name. One needs but to
hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below
him to recognize—and in but indifferently
modified measure —the very air and tone
of the actual slaveholder; and behind these are the
