The Kings

( Originally Published 1922 )

IT is still summer with the kings, God save them!—a summer that has lasted for many of them over a thousand years. They make as brave a show to-day as ever in the past. It is said they are neither loved nor feared so much as of old, and I know not how that may be; but of this I am sure, that the glory of kings is the envy of the world. The sunlight gilds their palaces and royal capitals, and strikes through the many-hued windows of their cathedrals in which they deign to accept a homage second only to that paid to Divinity itself. God is in His heaven, and they are on their hundred thrones.

And these thrones are quite as safe to-day as in the olden time when few or none doubted that the kings were set upon them by Divine Will. Thousands of armed men watch day and night to guard their peace. Cannon flank the entrances to their castles and palaces. The life of the king is the chief care and preoccupation of every people—many starve that he may live as befits his royal state—many die in battle that his throne may be secure. Yet it is true, as in the olden time, that a king falls now and then under the assassin's hand; and the wisdom of man has never rightly explained this seeming failure of the providence of God. But there is a lot for kings as for common men, and accidents prove nothing. Kingship is still the best job in the world—and there are no resignations. Once in a while, it is true, an abdication has to be declared on account of the imbecility of some crowned head—but think how long kings have been breeding kings! What wonder that the distemper should now and then break out in the royal stud?

It is summer with the kings. They have never been a costlier luxury than they are to-day, except that they are not suffered to make war so often.* Yet the world continues to pay the price of kings with gladness, and though we have heard so much of the rising tide of democracy, it has not wet the foot of a single throne in our time. No doubt it will sweep over them all some day, but our children's children shall not see it. There is hardly a king in Europe whose tenure is not quite as good as that of our glorious Republic. King-ship is even a better risk than when Canute set his chair in the sands of the shore. Wrap it up in what shape of mortality you please—let it look out boldly from the eyes of a real king, as rarely happens; let it peer from under the broken forehead of a fool or ogle in the glances of a hoary old Silenus,—it is still the one thing in the world which absolutely compels reverence. Other forms of authority are discounted more and more; the Pope who once had rule over kings, sees his sovereignty dwindled to a garden's breadth; the chiefs of republics wield a precarious power, often with-out respect: the glory that hedges a king re-mains undiminished and unaltered. The kings owe much to God, and God owes something to the kings—when the world shall have seen the last of these, it will perhaps discard the old idea of Divinity. But, as I have said al-ready, that will take a long, long time—so long that it is quite useless to form theories on the subject.

It is summer with the kings. Nowhere such radiant, golden summer as in royalty-loving Germany. There, big thrones and little thrones —such a lot of them!—are all sound and safe —sounder and safer than some of the royal heads that peer out from them. There the play of kingship has been played with the best success to an audience that seldom criticizes and never gets tired nor steals away between the acts. If the good God composed this play, —as so many people piously believe,—then He must hold the honest Germans in special favor—as an author He can not but be flattered. That he does so hold them is evident from His permitting them to triumph over those incomparably better actors, the French.

This charming, prosaic, joyous, antiquated, picturesque, yet somewhat dull pageant of royalty goes on in Germany forever. If it ever came to a stop for but one day, we may be sure the honest sun that has beamed approvingly upon it for centuries would do likewise. The people fully believe that God wrote the play, and they cling the more fondly to the belief for the reason aforesaid—that it is, like them-selves, a little dull. And what matters the sameness of the plot or the occasional incapacity of the leading actors, since the properties are as rich as ever and the stage-setting worthy of the best representations in the past?

Yes, it is summer with the kings, and never have they seemed safer on their hundred thrones. But now as ever in the long story of kingship, their safety lies not so much in their castles and forts, their arms and sentinels, their myriad spies and their hundred-handed police. Not so much in these things as in the sufferance of the patient people, and also their childlike enjoyment of the old play. From time to time the end of the piece is predicted; but it has had a famous run, and it will surely keep the boards—while there is summer with the kings.

S OME time ago I wrote that it was summer with the kings, but wondrous is the change wrought within a few short months. Now instead of golden summer, with the courtier sun gilding their palaces and domes and towers, and all the world eager to win a smile of them, a ray of royal favor,—there is win-ter, black with dread, lurid with rebellion, and sinister with every threat of treason and anarchy.

Though the kings yet hold some show of sovereignty, they are as prisoners in their own strong places, beleaguered by the victorious people and feeling no trust in the very guards of their person. The grand palaces are closed up and deserted, and the splendid cathedrals, in which so often the Te Deum has been raised in celebration of some royal victory, are now dark and silent, save for the threnody of mourning bells.

Yes, it is winter with the kings. Panic, terror and wild-eyed unrest hold the place of that mailed security which had sate at scornful ease there during a thousand years. The kings look fearfully forth from their strong towers and castles, marking the flames of revolution that creep steadily nearer and hearing the distant shouts of the advancing army of rebellion. No heart of grace do the kings find in the thickness of the encompassing walls. or the yet unbroken ranks of their soldiery. For every wind is now the courier of some new treason or blow at their power. Fealty is become a snare that watches its chance to kill or betray—he that rides forth with the royal command shall turn traitor ere yet he hath passed the shadow of the towers. It is marvellous how loyalty deserts a falling king!

Come now the priests in their most gorgeous vestments and bearing their most sacred images to cheer and console the dejected monarch. Of their fidelity he is at least assured, for to him and him alone they owe the grandeur of their state. But alas! what are priests to a king who has lost his people? . . . nay, they but remind him in his bitter despair of that Power which "bath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted them of low degree". Idly as he had often marked the solemn words, they come back to him now with a terrible weight of meaning. Almost he could bring himself to spit upon these fawning priests who had ever feared to show him the naked purport of the accusing test that now pierces his heart like a sword. And he turns away from their mummeries lest he should cry out against the treachery of their God and his who has thus abandoned him in his need.

It is winter with the kings. That old habit of loyalty and obedience which held their thrones as if mortised and tenoned in granite, has vanished in an hour. Oh, the kings can not see how long it took to mine and shatter their rock of sovereignty, and they blindly regard as the madness of a moment what has been the patient labor of centuries. Do not flout them in their fallen state by telling them that no hands wrought so busily at the work of destruction as their own. Have pity on the humbled kings !

But wait!—all can not yet be lost. Call in the leaders of the people and let us pledge our kingly word anew to grant the things they ask. 'Tis but a moment's humiliation and the fools will be content and huzza themselves back into our royal favor. Think you we do not know the cattle? Ho, there !—let the varlets be shown into our presence.

Alas, Sire!—it is now too late. Hard though it be to credit, the besotted people—pardon, Sire, for reporting the accursed heresy —have at last abandoned that to which they fondly clung in anguish and misery and trial, against even the evidence and reason of their brute minds, and in spite of all that your royal ancestors could do to alienate and destroy—their faith in kings!

But this is madness !—it can not be. What will the infatuate, misguided wretches do with-out their sovereign? Answer us that!

Craving your gracious pardon, Sire, they will do as well as they can. And from what we, your humble councillors, can learn, they expect to make shift with a saucy jade wearing a Phrygian cap, whom they name Liberty ! . . .