All these new titles, it should be said, were, so far as the courtiers
were concerned, a fruitful source of discontent. There were black looks
and mutinous whispers. The laws of precedence were being disturbed, and
the courtiers did not like it. It jars a man who for years has had his
social position all cut and dried--a man, to take an instance at
random, who, as Second Deputy Shiner of the Royal Hunting Boots, knows
that his place is just below the Keeper of the Eel-Hounds and just
above the Second Tenor of the Corps of Minstrels--it jars him, we say,
to find suddenly that he has got to go down a step in favour of the
Hereditary Bearer of the King's Baffy.
But it was from the priesthood that the real, serious opposition was to
be expected. And the priests of the sixty-seven gods of Oom were up in
arms. As the white-bearded High Priest of Hec, who by virtue of his
office was generally regarded as leader of the guild, remarked in a
glowing speech at an extraordinary meeting of the Priests' Equity
Association, he had always set his face against the principle of the
Closed Shop hitherto, but there were moments when every thinking man
had to admit that enough was sufficient, and it was his opinion that
such a moment had now arrived.
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