occasion with his father--had he ever found himself involved so deeply
in argument, or in any difference of opinion, as to be forced to feel
himself beaten. That single discussion with his father had been closed
peremptorily--parental and regal authority combining had cut it short;
and as for his wife--well, she was dear, amiable, and, within her
limits, sensible; but intellectually she was not his superior. Thus
there had come to him a good deal of social discipline, experience of a
kind, but of education in the higher intellectual sense scarcely any. He
had merely been taught carefully and elaborately to take up a certain
position, and in a vast number of minutely differing circumstances
(mainly of social formality) to fill it or seem to fill it "as one to
the manner born."

In addition he had been trained, on strictly impartial and noncommittal
lines, to take an interest in politics; to have within certain narrow
and prescribed limits an open mind--one, that is to say, with its
orifice comfortably adapted to the stuffing process practised on kings
by the great ones of the official world; and when his mind would not
open in certain required directions, well, after all, it did not much
matter, since in the end it made no practical difference.

Under these circumstances he would have been a mere social and official
automaton had not certain defects of his character saved him. Though
timid he was impulsive; he was also a little irritable, rather
suspicious, and indomitably fussy in response to the call of duty.
Temper, fuss, and curiosity saved him from boredom; he was
conscientiously industrious, and though there was much that he did not
understand he managed to be interested in nearly everything.

In the fiftieth year of his age, this monarch, amiable, affable, and of