He had grown to regard his pious and dying daughter as part of the furniture of the house and of the universe.

And as long as the great mass of authorities were on his side, his illusion was quite pardonable.

His crisis came when the authorities changed their front, and with one accord asked his permission to send his daughter abroad.

It was his crisis, and he refused.
He had, if we may judge from what we know of him, his own peculiar and somewhat detestable way of refusing.

Once when his daughter had asked a perfectly simple favour in a matter of expediency, permission, that is, to keep her favourite brother with her during an illness, her singular parent remarked that "she might keep him if she liked, but that he had looked for greater self-sacrifice." These were the weapons with which he ruled his people.