The King. That tone! I know it--it does not search the
air in which the patient lives, but the lungs. There you
have it! Nevertheless, Christianity must have an eye to
the monarchy--must pluck the lie from it--must not follow
it to its coronation in the church, as an ape follows a
peacock. I know what I felt in that situation. I had gone
through with a rehearsal the day before--ho, ho! Ask the
Christianity in this land, if it be not time to concern
itself with the monarchy. It should hardly any longer, it
seems to me, let the monarchy play the part of the
seductive wanton -who turns the thoughts of all citizens
to war--which is much against the message of Christianity
--and to class distinctions, to luxury, to show and vanity.
The monarchy is now so great a lie that it compels the
most upright man to share in its falsehood."

The conversation that follows is in a vein of bitterness on
the one side, and of obtuse smugness on the other; the tragic
irony of the action grows deeper and deeper, until in the end
the king, completely disheartened and despairing, goes into
an adjoining room, and dies by his own hand, to the
consternation of the men from whom he has just parted. They
give utterance to a few polite phrases, charitably accounting
for the deed by the easy attribution of insanity to the king,
and the curtain falls.

It may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in
literary and social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the
dovecotes of conventionality and conservatism. Such plain