to lose its absolute, or even its imaginary, values: unless 
     it manifested itself incessantly through new mortal 
     incarnations, it practically ceased to be immortality. The 
     King could not die, was not allowed to die, lest scores of 
     fictions of immortality were to break down; and while 
     kings died, they were granted the comfort of being told 
     that at least “as King” they “never died.” The jurists 
     themselves, who had done so much to build up the myths 
     of fictitious and immortal personalities, rationalized the 
     weakness of their creatures, and while elaborating their 
     surgical distinctions between the immortal Dignity and its 
     mortal incumbent and talking about two different bodies, 
     they had to admit that their personified immortal Dignity 
     was unable to act, to work, to will, or to decide without 
     the debility of mortal men who bore the Dignity and yet 
     would return to dust.