“I’ll keep to Elysium,” said the King.

“But you ought to be in Hell,” shouted the Bishop.

“Oh it would be Hell to you, just as your Paradise would be Hell to me,” said the King. “You’d find Elysium way over your head. The daylight hours are spent in a sort of perpetual banquet, interspersed with expeditions on the water, and there’s an opera every evening. And after lights out—no, no, Bishop, not for you. Of course I build a lot of new palaces, and you should see the gardens I’m planning. And furniture! Had it never struck you that a really satisfactory hereafter would involve perpetual delicious anxieties about new furniture? And—this is God’s charity at its most thoughtful—nobody ever sends in a bill!’

The Bishop’s face was an arena in which Pity wrestled with Outraged Virtue. “Man, man,” he said, “do ye never tire of pleasure?”

“Tire—of pleasure? What an extraordinary idea. Do you ever tire of good works?”

“Never! But good works, inspired by faith—”

“What kind of faith? Do you make nothing of my lifelong faith in art and beauty? I wasn’t an artist myself—except perhaps in my personal appearance—but I was a great patron, a great appreciator and inspirer, a commissioner of fine things, and a notable collector. Do you call that nothing?”

“I call it self-indulgence.”

“You, my lord, are a savage.”

“Do you call me a savage, you crowned and anointed buffoon! You jewelled and gilded puppet, good for nothing but silly folk to gape at!”

“Very well. I withdraw ‘savage’; it was an unworthy name for a King to apply to a Bishop of his own Church. But I shall say this; you are not a gentlephantom.”

“The rank is but the guinea stamp. I was one of the World’s Workers.”

“Then we shall never agree. You were devoted to what Davies here”—the King nodded toward me—”would doubtless call the Work Ethic. Whereas I was devoted to the Pleasure Principle. I enjoyed life and I encouraged enjoyment in others. On balance I think my kind of person has done rather more for mankind than yours.”

But John Strachan was not to be talked down. “Upon what is a University built if not upon the Work Ethic? What has the scholar to offer to his God greater than Work and Prayer?”

“What would God make of a university filled with nothing but sweaty psalm-singers?” said the King. “God, as a gentleman and an Anglican, must certainly appreciate scholarship, intellectual dignity, connoisseurship—all the attributes of civilization, and civilization owes more to the Pleasure Principle than it does to the Work Ethic, which is rnoneygrubbing humbug. That was why I took pains to put a representative of the Pleasure Principle in this University at its beginning. Yes, right under your nose, my careful friend, and you never saw what I had done.”

“And what was that?” The Bishop’s voice was scornful and suspicious.

“It wasn’t a that; it was a who,” said the King.

“Who, then?”

“A member of my family.”

“Hut! There was no member of your family here at the founding.”

“Oh, but there was. Surely you remember him? Indeed you yourself appointed him. Have you forgotten the Reverend John McCaul, first professor of Classics, and successor to yourself as President of the University?”

“John McCaul; a man of God; a man after my own heart!”

“Perhaps. But also my nephew.”

It is impossible for a ghost to have a seizure of apoplexy, but certainly that was what the ghost of Bishop Strachan seemed to be suffering. As he fought for breath, the King continued triumphantly.

“Surely you remember, my lord, that John McCaul came to Canada under the direct patronage of the Archbishop of Canterbury? My brothers were a wild lot of fellows, and they had many sons on the wrong side of the blanket. Like any good English family, we followed the custom of the day: convicts to Australia—bastards to Canada. John McCaul was of the Blood Royal.”

With a mighty effort, the Bishop raised his hand, and, like a meteor, a volume of the Dictionary of National Biography emerged from one of the arrow-slits in the Robarts Library and sailed down into his outstretched hand, open at page 446 of Volume XII. The King and I read therein an entry describing the somewhat unremarkable life of one Alexander McCaul, an Irish scholar and divine, which concluded with the curt entry: “He left several sons.”

“Aha,” said the King, “you observe that this very Victorian compilation says nothing whatever about the good parson’s wife. But she was well-known in her day. Well-known to my brother Fred, among others. Young John was his lad. You must have heard the rumours?”

The Bishop was shielding his eyes with his hand, but he shook his head.

Now it was the King’s turn. He lifted his hand and at once came the response from Robarts—a volume bound in red which I had no trouble in recognizing as University College—a Portrait, edited by Claude T. Bissell. There, on pages 4 and 5, the Bishop and I read: “The Reverend John McCaul remained Professor of Classics, and became President of the University of Toronto. He had come to Canada in 1839 as Principal of Upper Canada College, on the special recommendation of the Archbishop of Canterbury; and this fact, as well as certain rumours as to his royal parentage explain perhaps his preferment in Canada, and his survival of forty years of bitter controversy over university affairs”.

“There, you see,” said the King. “It was obvious to anybody who looked at him; obvious still, if you take a good look at the portrait of young Jack in the Great Hall of Hart House. He’s the spitting image of my brother Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex. Fred was always fond of classics, so the lad came by it honestly. Fred asked the Archbishop to find something for young Jack, and of course he did.”

It seemed to me that the King had won, hands down, and I thought it a little ungenerous of him to dance upon the body of a fallen foe.

“Come along, Dr. Strachan, we must return our books to the Library; others may want them, you know.” He tossed the history of University College into the air, and like a swallow it sped back to Robarts; the Bishop’s book was slower to return than it had been in coming, and laboured in its flight, like a turkey. The King continued to rub salt into the wound.

“I think it rather shabby of the University to have grudged John McCaul some recognition of his royal parentage. I want you to take care of that, Davies. In this Sesquicentennial year, you must have—well, not the royal arms, but the arms of the Duke of Sussex affixed to the top of the frame of his picture. With a proper attaint of bastardy on it, of course. It would do a little something to make up for the University’s shabby treatment of me.”

Bishop Strachan’s face was still buried in his hands, but his voice, choked with tears, could be heard. “Och, Johnnie McCaul, could ye no have confided your shame to your Bishop?” he sobbed.

“Oh don’t be such an old Goosey Gander, Strachan,” said the King. “McCaul’s bastardy was his glory, and reflected glory on this University. Consider the Pleasure Principle and dry your eyes. You look a perfect quiz. And be realistic Strachan (His Majesty insisted on giving full, phlegmy Scottish honours to the name)—how do you expect anyone to survive as a University President who is not, in one sense or another, a bastard? Now Davies, I rely on you; have that heraldic ornament on young Jack’s frame before the Sesquicentennial Year ends.”

Here was a pretty kettle of fish! But I remembered something Vincent Massey had told me, years ago.

“Your Majesty is by no means forgotten in this University,” said I. “Have you visited the Senate Chamber?”

“Should I?”

“If you would be so gracious as to do so,” said I, “you would see that above the Chancellor’s great chair in that handsome room there is a splendid achievement of arms. You would immediately recognize them, Sire, for they are your own. And they were placed there by the designer of that room, who was also the Founder of this College.”