Yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty to see. It resembled a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi; and during the next fifteen minutes we stood under a steady drizzle of microscopic fragments of knights and hardware and horse-flesh. I say we, for the king joined the audience, of course, as soon as he had got his breath again. There was a hole there which would afford steady work for all the people in that region for some years to come — mdash; in trying to explain it, I mean; as for filling it up, that service would be comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot of a select few — mdash; peasants of that seignory; and they wouldn’t get anything for it, either.
But I explained it to the king myself. I said it was done with a dynamite bomb, This information did him no damage, because it left him as intelligent as he was before. However, it was a noble miracle, in his eyes, and was another settler for Merlin. I thought ———————————————————————— Page 263
it well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sort that it couldn’t be done except when the atmospheric conditions were just right. Otherwise he would be encoring it every time we had a good subject, and that would be inconvenient, because I hadn’t any more bombs along.
———————————————————————— Page 264
Chapter 28
DRILLING THE KING
ON the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, and we had been tramping an hour in the chill dawn, I came to a resolution: the king must be drilled; things could not go on so, he must be taken in hand and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or we couldn’t ever venture to enter a dwelling; the very cats would know this masquerader for a humbug and no peasant. So I called a halt and said:
“Sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, there is no discrepancy; but as between your clothes and your bearing, you are all wrong, there is a most noticeable discrepancy. Your soldierly stride, your lordly port — mdash; these will not do. You stand too straight, your looks are too high, too confident. The cares of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin, they do not depress the high level of the eye-glance, they do not put doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of them in slouching body and unsure step. It is the sordid cares of the lowly born that do these things. You must learn the trick; you must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery, oppression, insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sap the manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper and ———————————————————————— Page 265
approved subject and a satisfaction to his masters, or the very infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go to pieces at the first hut we stop at. Pray try to walk like this.”
The king took careful note, and then tried an imitation.
“Pretty fair — mdash; pretty fair. Chin a little lower, please — mdash; there, very good. Eyes too high; pray don’t look at the horizon, look at the ground, ten steps in front of you. Ah — mdash; that is better, that is very good. Wait, please; you betray too much vigor, too much decision; you want more of a shamble. Look at me, please — mdash; this is what I mean……Now you are getting it; that is the idea — mdash; at least, it sort of approaches it……Yes, that is pretty fair. But! There is a great big something wanting, I don’t quite know what it is. Please walk thirty yards, so that I can get a perspective on the thing……Now, then — mdash; your head’s right, speed’s right, shoulders right, eyes right, chin right, gait, carriage, general style right — mdash; everything’s right! And yet the fact remains, the aggregate’s wrong. The account don’t balance. Do it again, please……NOW I think I begin to see what it is. Yes, I’ve struck it. You see, the genuine spiritlessness is wanting; that’s what’s the trouble. It’s all amatueur — mdash; mechanical details all right, almost to a hair; everything about the delusion perfect, except that it don’t delude.”