The World Set Free

Section 4

So it was King Egbert talked at Brissago after they had proclaimed the unity of the world.  Every evening after that the assembly dined together and talked at their ease and grew accustomed to each other and sharpened each other’s ideas, and every day they worked together, and really for a time believed that they were inventing a new government for the world.  They discussed a constitution.  But there were matters needing attention too urgently to wait for any constitution.  They attended to these incidentally.  The constitution it was that waited.  It was presently found convenient to keep the constitution waiting indefinitely as King Egbert had foreseen, and meanwhile, with an increasing self-confidence, that council went on governing….

On this first evening of all the council’s gatherings, after King Egbert had talked for a long time and drunken and praised very abundantly the simple red wine of the country that Leblanc had procured for them, he fathered about him a group of congenial spirits and fell into a discourse upon simplicity, praising it above all things and declaring that the ultimate aim of art, religion, philosophy, and science alike was to simplify.  He instanced himself as a devotee to simplicity.  And Leblanc he instanced as a crowning instance of the splendour of this quality.  Upon that they all agreed.

When at last the company about the tables broke up, the king found himself brimming over with a peculiar affection and admiration for Leblanc, he made his way to him and drew him aside and broached what he declared was a small matter.  There was, he said, a certain order in his gift that, unlike all other orders and decorations in the world, had never been corrupted.  It was reserved for elderly men of supreme distinction, the acuteness of whose gifts was already touched to mellowness, and it had included the greatest names of every age so far as the advisers of his family had been able to ascertain them.  At present, the king admitted, these matters of stars and badges were rather obscured by more urgent affairs, for his own part he had never set any value upon them at all, but a time might come when they would be at least interesting, and in short he wished to confer the Order of Merit upon Leblanc.  His sole motive in doing so, he added, was his strong desire to signalise his personal esteem.  He laid his hand upon the Frenchman’s shoulder as he said these things, with an almost brotherly affection.  Leblanc received this proposal with a modest confusion that greatly enhanced the king’s opinion of his admirable simplicity.  He pointed out that eager as he was to snatch at the proffered distinction, it might at the present stage appear invidious, and he therefore suggested that the conferring of it should be postponed until it could be made the crown and conclusion of his services.  The king was unable to shake this resolution, and the two men parted with expressions of mutual esteem.

The king then summoned Firmin in order to make a short note of a number of things that he had said during the day.  But after about twenty minutes’ work the sweet sleepiness of the mountain air overcame him, and he dismissed Firmin and went to bed and fell asleep at once, and slept with extreme satisfaction.  He had had an active, agreeable day.