"Not for excess of caution?" queried the King. "Did you not yourself say that on those lines government would become impossible? You have to run your railway system, it seems, with a certain risk of accidents--otherwise you would never be up to time."
"That is so," said the Professor. "In every political crisis it is pace more than principle that I find one has to consider. If it is solved in such and such a way, our pace will be so and so, and the question--will it take us safely over the curve? If it is solved in another way so that the pace slackens, those wagons in the rear may be down upon us."
"And the guard, whose control, while the train makes its running, is but nominal, is then the first to suffer!" He saw himself in the man's place. "Poor glow-worm!" he cried, "he may change the green light in his tail to red--or was it red to begin with? but it is no use! Those proletarian forces descending upon him from the rear are quite blind in their purpose: it is merely dead weight and impetus that send them along." And then he pulled up abruptly, astonished to find that he was talking in Max's manner. Was it so catching?
"Not wholly blind, sir," said the Professor; "believe me, they mean well--mainly to themselves, no doubt: that is only human nature. Every body in the community, whether energized or sluggish, has some weight attached to it; and the more that bodies can agree to combine the greater is their weight politically. One has to recognize that consensus of opinion carries with it a certain moral as well as physical force. Out of that springs the evolution of our governing system."
"Only I," said the King, "in the nature of things have always to stand alone."
"Sir, you have all history!" said the Professor.
"Which, as you have reminded me, I do not know."
"May I inquire, sir, whether you have a real wish to know?"
"Why, naturally!" exclaimed the King. Whereupon the Professor, as though laying aside something of his officialdom, took up an easier attitude and addressed himself to the point.
"It would, I think, sir, be quite compatible with my duty to my colleagues were I to send your Majesty a few volumes of constitutional history with certain appropriate passages marked. It would interest me very greatly to hear the argument developed on the lines you have already laid down. The history I would venture to send is a thoroughly reliable and standard authority, written by an eminent jurist to whose words we later historians still bow. As I said, sir, _pace_ is to-day the thing which really matters; beyond a given pace we, certainly, are not able to go. Luckily for our present plans there is no source from which any forcing of the pace seems probable. I do not think this or any other ministry dare attempt it. Speaking for ourselves any increase of the present pace would, I conceive, become a grave embarrassment. If, therefore, your Majesty has been apprehensive of our adopting any increase of speed, I think you may be reassured. After the constitutional readjustment our pace is scarcely likely to grow dangerous."