REALMAH’S APPEARANCE BEFORE THE FOUR HUNDRED.

The office of prosecutor was entrusted to the high priest of the deity who was supposed to be offended,--the god of storms. It may easily be imagined with what fervour and with what force of argument he pressed the charge.

Upon whom, he asked, of all the gods did their fate and fortunes more depend than upon Rotondarah, the lord of winds, of thunder, and of storms? They, their families, and their habitations existed only by the sufferance of his mighty will. Was this to be imperilled by the arrogance, or the carelessness, or the impiety, of one young man? He did not deny that Realmah had lately been of some service to the state; but of what weight was any mere earthly consideration of that kind when weighed against the danger of impiety? Any appeal to mercy upon such grounds must be looked upon as a temptation to be sedulously overcome if they, the judges, were not to implicate themselves in the crime of impiety.

They all knew what painful disputes there had been about the modes of worshipping this powerful deity. He wished to heaven that all their nation had adopted that mode of worship which insured most sacrifice to, and therefore most favour from, Rotondarah.

But could anybody, even the most careless of worshippers, contend that no worship of any kind was to be offered at the altar of a deity who had especially favoured their city and their nation? The least strict amongst the sects which unhappily divided the worshippers of Rotondarah, should view with most abhorrence the conduct of Realmah, if it would not have that conduct set down as a natural result of its doctrines, when received by an irreverent and ill-governed mind.

As to the facts of the case, they would be uncontradicted. In the preliminary inquiry it was shown that the wives of the accused, anxious as they were to screen him, had not been able to produce one single jot of evidence in his favour.

Let the Four Hundred think what the accusation was:--that, at their greatest festival, in the midst of assembled thousands, this presumptuous young man had dared to make a mockery of his pretended worship; and that, whether from cowardice, from insolence, or from impiety, not one drop of his blood had flowed in honour of that powerful deity, whose altars he (the chief priest) never approached without a feeling of his abject unworthiness to minister upon them.

The above is but a faint outline of the speech pronounced by the chief priest against Realmah. There was, however, one great error in it, of which the accused did not fail to avail himself. The chief priest had alluded to their divisions of opinion as regarded the worship of Rotondarah; and Realmah saw in that statement an opening for theological discussion, which would be likely to produce great discord in the assembly, and thus, perhaps, enable him to evade the point in question.

He arose and commenced his oration, of which also but a poor outline can be given. Moreover, the modes of eloquence in different nations are so diverse, that if all of the speech were given, much of it that consisted of fables and apologues, which were highly pleasing to that assembly, might appear tedious to modern minds.

Realmah began by alluding delicately to the motives which he believed had induced Parejah to institute the prosecution. He said that he trusted that these motives were not the promptings of private malice and dislike. For a man of Parejah’s eminence in the state to be influenced by such motives would be in the highest degree disgraceful; and the result might be not dissimilar from that which befell Ginkel the fox, whose pious anxiety, not unmixed with motives of self-interest, for his little brother’s religious behaviour, ended in the discovery that he, too, was wont to make the eight morning salutations at the wrong time.[12]

Footnote 12:

This was a very happy allusion, thoroughly understood by the audience. “Ginkel the fox” was a well-known character, entering often into the fables of the Sheviri. He was a very cunning fox, but never quite cunning enough for the occasion. The following is probably the fable alluded to.

Ginkel and his younger brother, a good pious young fox, go out hunting one morning. The younger brother catches a hen, and prepares to return home with it. Ginkel thinks he should like to have it all for himself. He is suddenly seized with scruples of conscience for his brother, who had that day omitted to make the eight morning salutations which it was incumbent upon all good foxes to make. In fact, he had not said his prayers before going out to hunt. The good younger brother fears that he must not eat any of the hen, but still continues to carry it home.

They then meet a priest-fox, and Ginkel hastens to put the case of conscience to him. The younger brother lays down the hen, and pleads for himself that he was going to make the eight morning salutations after he returned home.

“Too late, too late! my son,” says the priest-fox, upon which Ginkel is about to take the hen in his mouth. But the priest-fox asks Ginkel at what time he made the eight salutations?

“Oh,” exclaims Ginkel, turning his eyes up to heaven, “long before morning broke, I made my salutations: I never forget.”

“Too soon, too soon! my son,” says the priest-fox. “The day had not begun; the hen has not been properly prayed for; and now can only be eaten by a priest-fox:” saying which he throws the hen over his back, and leaves Ginkel and his little brother very hungry, but much edified.

He then gracefully rebutted the charge of cowardice. It was not for him, he said, in the presence of men, many of whose lives were graced by numerous deeds of valour done in the service of their country, to allude at length to any action of his, though perhaps it might be allowed him to remark that neither in the advance to, nor the retreat from, Abinamanche[13] had he been conspicuous for cowardice. (There was a murmur of applause throughout the assembly.) As regarded the charge of insolence, could it for a moment be supposed that he, who from his birth had been a helpless cripple, subject to great infirmity, could ever look upon himself as other than the meanest and humblest amongst them?

Footnote 13:

The chief town of the Phelatahs.

As to the charge of impiety, he called the gods to witness, and he would appeal to the great Rotondarah himself, whether impiety was not the one thing farthest from his thoughts? (Here he introduced a curious story, which was not unfamiliar to his audience, of how a poor man, who in distant ages had stood aloof from the sacrifices to Varoona, the goddess of the waters, had been signalized by her as her most devoted worshipper--his omission to join in a rite, which after all was but a mere outward sign of love and worship, having only arisen from the intensity of his heartfelt adoration.) Even in the expression of earthly affections, Realmah added, it was not always those who made the loudest demonstrations who had the truest and the most devoted hearts. What if he had been communing in rapt enthusiasm with his nymph, his only thought being how, with her aid, he might show himself most grateful to this adorable deity, Rotondarah? He spoke in the presence of those who had many times been conscious of a similar high ecstasy.

This last was a most skilful touch, for it was a matter of pride amongst the Sheviri to appear at times abstracted from all intercourse with their fellow-beings in sublime communion with their nymphs.

After a pause, Realmah resumed. “That venerable man, the chief priest,” said he, “whose accusations have fallen so heavily upon my soul, must know better than all other men what this rapt communion is; and he might be lenient to another man who had committed an error, if error it be, when his soul was absorbed by the highest discourse.”

The chief priest, he continued, had alluded to the painful divisions in opinion and in conduct which had unhappily beset their nation as to their modes of worshipping Rotondarah. Was it to be wondered at that he, an unlearned young man, humiliated by infirmity from his birth, should hesitate as to what form of worship he should adopt in the presence of Rotondarah; and, in that embarrassment of thought, lose the happy moment for worshipping at all?--that is, in outward ceremony, for he dared any man to say that he had failed in the truest devotion of the heart.

Let them not say that these divisions of opinion were trifling, and that the great Rotondarah was indifferent as to the way in which he was to be worshipped. In matters of small import there might be two ways, equally right, of doing a thing; but not in this. (Here from all parts of the assembly resounded exclamations of assent.) Let them not dare to say, he continued, that the believer, who, for a time, maimed himself by wounding the whole four fingers of the right hand in honour of this divinity, had not some reason for contending that he showed superior piety to the man who coolly drew blood from the thumb of the left hand, which enabled him after his worship to prosecute his ordinary work as if nothing had happened.

A tumult of applause arose from the strict sect of the Right-hand Four-Fingerites, who were in great force in the assembly. Being for the most part men that had made their way in life, and who loved what is called respectability, they had many seats in the Council of the Four Hundred.

Far, too, would it be from him (Realmah) to impute blame to those humble and innocent persons who thought that Rotondarah was not to be worshipped by drawing blood from one part of the body only, but who gave up their whole bodies, it might be to light wounds, but still their whole bodies, in sacrifice to him.

Hereupon there were violent acclamations of approval from the least strict of the sects. A personal altercation also arose between one of the strict sect and one of the least strict, the latter having called the former _a cream-coloured face_ (their term for hypocrite), and a fool.

When the feud was settled by the officers of the assembly turning out both the disputants, Realmah continued:--

He had never, he said, been able to appreciate the profound thoughts and subtle arguments which had, doubtless, led those who wounded the thumb to conclude that their mode of worshipping Rotondarah was the most grateful to that deity. But this he did know, that a sect to which the great Leonvah had belonged--the hero who had led their forefathers to a hundred victories--must have a great deal to say for itself. (The name of “Leonvah!” “Leonvah!” was shouted forth with enthusiasm by the Thumbites, quite overpowering some sneering remarks that were made by certain arid theologians of the opposing sects, who said, that a man might hit a hard blow with a heavy hand, and yet be very ignorant of the most important questions in theology.) Realmah resumed:--

Least of all would it be for him to presume to blame the sect from which he sprung, and which contained in its ranks those who held the chief offices of state. In their high sense of duty to their country they had doubtless sought to mediate between the two parties, and had adopted a middle course, seeking to please Rotondarah more by their devotion to the nation, which was under his special protection, than even by outward devotion to Rotondarah himself. Perhaps in their hearts, too, many of them longed to join the one side or the other of the disputants, whom they stood aloof from only to break and still the opposing waves of popular opinion which had threatened to submerge the state.

Here the grave official men nodded approval; while, from various parts of the hall, cries of “time-servers,” and “world-servers,” and “shell-worshippers,” resounded.

The assembly was now in a fearful state of ferment. Sharp theological discussions were being carried on in different quarters of the hall. Loud appeals were made to the _manes_ of departed heroes who had held strong opinions on one side, or the other, of the controversy.

The four great chiefs, who had sat apart in the principal seats of honour, situated north, south, east, and west in the hall, approached one another in the centre, and consulted as to whether they should then and there dissolve the assembly. At this moment, vehement shouting was heard outside the hall. Several men fully armed burst in.

A curious and cool observer (had there been one in that large assemblage) might have noticed that these men were either personal followers of Realmah, or belonged to the tribe of the fishermen.

“The enemy are near,” they shouted, “some of their watch-fires may be seen on the mountain. To the drawbridges!” and they rushed out, followed at once by the greater part of the assembly. True enough; there were fires just discernible upon several parts of the mountain. The alarm spread throughout Abibah. The guards were doubled at all the drawbridges; large bodies of armed men remained all night in the open spaces of the town; and every precaution was taken to prevent a surprise.

In the morning it was found that the enemy had decamped, and no signs were left of them but the smouldering watchfires and some remnants of half-consumed provisions.

Strange to say, when the town was restored to quiet and order, there was no further prosecution on the charge of impiety against Realmah. Some few zealots sounded the chief priest as to when there should be a further hearing of the case; but the shrewd old man remarked that his nymph had been very gracious in her whisperings to him lately, and that there would be no lucky day in this year, he thought, on which the prosecution could be wisely recommenced. Besides, he added, the young man is either a deep knave or a profound enthusiast; and it might, perhaps, be better to wait for a year to see in which direction his character will develop itself. He might prove their fastest friend: he might become their most dangerous enemy. There were parts of the lad’s doctrine which were very sound. Rotondarah, heaven bless his clemency, had waited many years for fitting worship from most men. Perhaps he would deign to wait another year for some suitable reverence from Realmah.

The zealots, who also were not without their craftiness, bowed assent to the words of the chief priest; and Realmah remained unmolested, and not unfeared.

This trial, however, exercised a great influence on his fortunes, for he felt that, on the first opportunity, he must signalize himself by some great deed of valour or of wisdom, for a man who was accused of impiety had need to be very strong in the affections of his countrymen, in order to efface all memory of the charge from their timid and superstitious minds.

Is it possible that the enemy were never upon the mountain that night? and was it for nothing that the Ainah went from house to house of her tribe, remaining a long time with her brothers, who were the loudest to shout when the armed men broke in upon the assembly on the day of Realmah’s trial? If so, Realmah himself did not know it, or was too subtle to know it officially, though he did remark to the Ainah, “how watchful her tribe must be, for they were the first people who seemed to have discerned those fires.” The plain girl merely answered that her poor people were, of necessity, great watchers; and after saying this, she hastened to withdraw with a profound obeisance, but a dry smile might have been observed playing upon those lips of hers not far from being beautiful.

_Cranmer._ I wish to make a remark.

_Ellesmere._ Silence, silence, for half an hour. Mr. Cranmer wishes to make a remark.

_Cranmer._ This is too bad, Sir John. I am sure that for every word I utter in this good company, you utter one hundred and seventy-six. Why should I occupy half an hour with a single remark?

_Ellesmere._ The calculation is exact. Have I not heard you say in the House, “I should wish to address a very few remarks to the House upon this subject,” and has not your speech generally lasted for one hour and a half? Now, I take a “very few” to mean three: one remark of yours, therefore, if I do the sum rightly, will occupy half an hour.

_Cranmer._ Well, we shall see. I was going to say that one great merit of Milverton’s mode of telling us this story is, that he never breaks off abruptly and leaves us in suspense. If he brings his hero into trouble, he brings him out again, in the same portion of the narrative.

Now, I daresay you will all despise me, and think that I am a dull, prosaic being; but I must own that I do not care much for fiction. It does not amuse me. Laugh as much as you like, but I prefer a blue book to any novel.

My daughters, however, make up for my want of imaginativeness, and they devour novels. You know these serial things: they are always reading them. Sometimes they rush up to me, and exclaim, “Oh, papa, how I wish it was the beginning of next month!” Now you know when one comes to a certain age, one is not so anxious for it to be the beginning of next month, when it is only the second or third of this month. But young people think that they have such a large balance in the Bank of Life, that they can afford to draw upon it in the rashest manner.

_Ellesmere._ I declare that is a very pretty financial simile.

_Cranmer._ Thank you, Sir John; you are very encouraging. I have not exhausted my half hour yet, and so I will proceed.

Well, I venture to suggest to these dear daughters of mine that I am not so anxious for this rapid passing away of time, to which they reply, “But oh, papa, he is in such difficulty; he must be killed. There is nobody near to save him.” This “he” is some fellow in a novel.

_Ellesmere._ My dear Cranmer, I will restore peace and concord to your household. Teach your daughters the true doctrine of Indispensables.

_Cranmer._ What _do_ you mean, Sir John, by Indispensables?

_Ellesmere._ Why, don’t you know? They are the fellows who, if you get rid of them at one part of the story, must re-appear in another.

Now, Cranmer, you are to be a villain in a novel. I assure you it is a very creditable part to assign to you. I always like the villains best. They are the only business-like people in the concern. I will be the Indispensable.

Now try and get rid of me if you can.

You stab me to the heart, and leave me on the ground. I assure you it is of no use. An Indispensable’s heart is quite differently placed from that of any other man. The desperate wound you gave me was in fact the best surgical treatment that could be devised for a slight internal complaint which I labour under; and you will find me as lively as ever in the third volume, and ready to unmask your wicked designs.

Or it is a dark, gusty night. We two are walking the deck alone. You politely edge me over the side of the vessel, and go to sleep in your hammock, feeling that you have done a good stroke of business. What do I do? The ship is only going nineteen knots an hour. I therefore easily swim to her, and secrete myself in the stays, or the main chains, or the shrouds, or the dead lights, or some of those mysterious places in a ship, which Sir Arthur knows all about. There I stick like a barnacle, and you carry me into port with you. I can tell you that when you are just about to make a most advantageous marriage, I shall put my head in at the church-door, and say “Ha!” with a loud voice, and the whole affair will be broken off.

Or you poison me. Bless your heart, poison has no more effect upon my Mithridatic constitution than ginger-beer--probably not so much.

You bury me. No: you don’t. You don’t bury _me_, but some intrusive fellow who has thrust himself in, to take my place; for an Indispensable has always about him obliging persons who do that kind of work for him.

Or you hurl me down from a cliff, 300 feet high, and go away thinking you have now really got rid of me for good and all. But, Mr. Villain, you are much mistaken. I, as an Indispensable, inevitably fall upon a sea-anemone, rather a large one, three feet square and two feet thick, very common, however, in that part of the coast.

[Much laughter from all of us.]

The poor anemone is somewhat injured, and I am a little shaken; but I shall appear again at the right time, with my fatal “Ha!” and upset your marriage.

By the way, there is one thing which has never been tried upon the Indispensable. Take him to the House of Commons, Cranmer, and make him attend, for three nights following, from half-past six to nine.

The mixture of irritability and comatoseness which might thus be produced, would bring on what doctors call, at least Dr. Ellesmere does, an apoplectic paralysis.

And then you see, Cranmer, if you did not quite kill him, you could reduce him to idiotcy, which would be nearly as good for your purpose, and enable you to carry on your villany undisturbed.

Oh, how I wish that good people in real life were as difficult to kill as Indispensables in fiction!

_Sir Arthur._ I am not so sure that I agree with Cranmer. I rather like to be kept in an agony of suspense, and I cannot praise Milverton for being so considerate to our feelings.

_Ellesmere._ Quite true. Praise is nearly always wrong. However, I am not going to indulge much in it. I see that Milverton makes this rogue Realmah, a perfect politician. Now, is that natural?

_Sir Arthur._ Well, why not? Do you suppose that all policy is confined to civilized people?

_Ellesmere._ No; but Realmah, I contend, is an official man of the nineteenth century.

_Mauleverer._ Then, indeed, he is a rogue.

_Ellesmere_ (who laughed heartily). It is a comfort to find that one always has Mr. Mauleverer to back one up in any attack upon any class or portion of the human race.

But to return to the story. I must say I rather like the Ainah; and Milverton has had the courage to make her not too beautiful.

_Milverton._ I have never been able to do the Ainah justice. You know that, for the most part, when one endeavours to describe a man or a woman, either in history or in a novel, one is obliged to make it seem like the description of a runaway slave. Who can portray the delicate lights and shadows, the smiles and dimples, which go to make a beautiful, or, at the least, a most expressive, countenance?

By the way, you must not suppose, when I have spoken of the Ainah’s hands as being rather large and plebeian, that they had not a beauty of their own; and oh, what an expressive thing the hand is!

_Sir Arthur._ Very true. The other day I was sitting near one of the greatest men in England (perhaps it was in the House of Commons, but I shall not tell you where exactly), and he was suffering from suppressed anger, and was being bullied from all directions. The man maintained his part admirably: he was calm and equable in reply: when he sat down, he put on an air of repose; he kept himself still, he governed his eyes, he governed that organ difficult to govern, the mouth; but his hands quivered with the emotion he felt, and the veins stood out upon them in stern relief. He little imagined he betrayed to me by those hands all that he felt.

_Milverton._ I have always noticed that great men, without a single exception, have great hands. I do not mean large hands, but expressive hands--hands that indicate greatness. The late Lord Melbourne almost talked with his hands, and so I must say of the Ainah. She had not a small hand: she had not hands with tapering fingers, which we admire so much in women; but she had expressive hands, which possess a beauty of their own.

_Ellesmere._ I do declare, Milverton is in love with the Ainah; and, as Mrs. Milverton has such very pretty hands, according to the usual type, I wonder she is not jealous.

_Lady Ellesmere._ Don’t make mischief, sir. You can do very little good in your generation, and you might therefore avoid doing harm.

_Ellesmere._ There we have again a truly conjugal remark. No great conqueror, who is a married man, has any occasion, when he is taking his triumph, to have a slave with him in his chariot, to remind him that he is mortal. His dear wife and children--who, by the way, are anything but slaves--will be sure to give him sufficient discouragement (of course for his good), and to convince him that he is anything but a divinity.

I cannot comment much upon this story of Realmah. I am thoroughly puzzled by it. There are many pretty points about the story: the courtship is amusing; the prosecution for impiety is not without its slyness; and it is evident that Milverton has thrown his whole force into the depicting and drawing out of the Ainah. But what puzzles me is, that I cannot see the general drift and purpose of the story. Now, I know the man to be full of purpose, and that he is sure to have some scheme in his head,--some wonderful theory which he wishes to impress upon us all, and upon which we are to begin to act to-morrow morning; but I cannot discern what it is.

Here my master and I interchanged smiles (the reader will forgive me for associating myself with the work). We know very well what we are aiming at, and were pleased to find that so acute a man as Sir John had not found us out too soon.

_Sir Arthur._ I admire the story very much, and think that great things are yet to come out of it.

_Ellesmere._ Oh yes, we all know that. That is the regular kind of thing for one author to say to another. It is the fashion of the day for all members of the same profession to speak most respectfully of each other. Sir Robert, my successor, does so of me; I do so of him: what we really think of each other’s knowledge of law is best known to ourselves.

The same with the medical profession. Dr. B. is called in to assist Dr. A. What does he say? Nothing could have been more skilful than Dr. A.’s treatment hitherto of the case. He should now, he thinks, begin to throw in a little assafœtida, say 1 drachm, and hydrarg. 3 oz., instead of opii tinct. 9 scruples,--that is, if this slight change in the prescription meets with Dr. A.’s entire approval.

As for authors, they are generally in ecstasies (honest ecstasies!) when talking to one another of each other’s performances. Have I not seen a number of serpents in a cage as civil to each other as possible, upreared upon the penultimate parts of their tails, and bowing affably to one another,--in process of time to become quite fond and fondling? I think nothing of Sir Arthur’s praise of Realmah.

_Milverton._ I think it is one of the pleasantest things of our time to see----

_Ellesmere._ Don’t go into it seriously. I only meant an eighth part of what I said, but you are all so matter-of-fact and so stupid.

But what I say about “Realmah” I really mean. The author is a man unwholesomely full of purpose. He would not care to write the most interesting story in the world, not the “Vicar of Wakefield” or “La Petite Fadette,” which I think the prettiest story I ever read, except he had some distinct purpose in writing it. It must prove something, or illustrate something; but what that something is in the present case, I cannot for the life of me make out.

By the way, I must make another remark, and that is, that I do not see anything so very clever in the little stories and fables which your lake-men, Milverton, are so fond of. I could invent fables by the dozen.

_Sir Arthur._ Could you, Sir John? Perhaps you would favour us with one of the dozen this morning?

_Ellesmere._ With pleasure, in a minute or two: just give me time to think.

Hereupon he walked about for a few minutes. As he got up to walk, I saw him look at Fairy, and was sure the fable would be about a dog. He resumed his place, and began his fable.

A man and his dog were walking along a straight road, chatting pleasantly together.

The road was straight, because it was in the good old times of the Romans; and the two companions understood each other well because in those days the dogs talked dog Latin.

“Yes,” said the man, “you certainly are a very clever creature. You make good use of your nose, and your eyes, and your ears. What a pity it is you have not hands like we have!”

“Oh,” said the dog, “you don’t know, then, that we once had hands like yours, and how fortunate we were to get rid of them? You see even now in the streets that there are some of us who, attended by Helvetii playing musical instruments, walk upright, and gain many denarii.

“But this is how we came to lose our hands. Diana, much pleased with our skill in hunting, resolved to ask great Jupiter to confer some signal boon upon us. We consulted together as to what our kind mistress should ask for us. Some said that men should not be allowed to pick the bones quite so clean before they tossed them to us; others that hares and rabbits should not be so fleet; and others that we should not be called by such mean and foolish names as men are wont to give us. But one prudent old dog said, ‘Jove is wiser than we are; let us ask him to take away from us whatever we have now which is most dangerous for us to have.’

“Our prayer was heard, for suddenly our hands became paws, and henceforward we went upon four legs.

“Many of my brother dogs grumbled at this change, and howled to Jupiter that he was mocking us; but Jove replied, ‘My good friends, I have done the best I could for you; you might hereafter make as bad a use of your hands as men are making of theirs, and thus in time become as dishonest and wicked as they are.’ We acknowledged the wisdom of Jupiter; and so the monkey was left to be, in form as in nature, the creature most resembling man.”

The poor Roman could not make any reply, and the dog trotted on by his side, wagging his tail approvingly at his own wit.

_Lady Ellesmere._ Where is the moral, John?

_Cranmer._ Yes; where is the moral?

_Ellesmere._ Moral! Why, my good people, the fable is as full of moral as a pigeon-pie at an inn is--of tough beefsteak.

Moral Number One:--

People are proudest of what they should be most ashamed of; _i.e._ man of his hands, which he makes such bad use of.

Moral Number Two:--

Attend, Lady Ellesmere. It is always better to get rid of a plague or an evil, than to acquire a new good.

Moral Number Three:--

Attend, Fairy. Dogs are better and much honester creatures than men.

_Sir Arthur._ The fable is clever enough, and has plenty of moral in it--indeed too much--but it lacks simplicity. Who would ever think of quoting it, to illustrate anything?

_Milverton._ Let me now try my hand at a fable.

The sun was setting; the moon was rising; and one solitary traveller was plodding his weary way across the Libyan desert.

“Madam, my sister,” said the sun, “how is it that men are so much more grateful to you than to me? All day long have I warmed that poor traveller, and guided him on his way, yet not a kind word did I receive from him; whereas, no sooner do you make your pale appearance above the horizon, than he breaks out into a song of gratitude, celebrating your goodness and your loveliness.”

“Sir, my brother,” replied the moon, “your benefits are too manifest, and you take care that all you do for men shall be seen in broad daylight.

“What little I can do for them, how I keep their oceans sweet, is known but to few of them.

“Men try to be sufficiently grateful to you, but they love me, not only for my gentleness and my loveliness, but also for my great reserve.”

The great god of day did not deign to make any reply, but went down red and angry into the western waters.

_Sir Arthur._ This is much better, still there is the same fault, it lacks simplicity; and the moral, namely, that to insure gratitude you should conceal your benefits as much as possible from the eyes of others, is a modern idea, not belonging to the age when fables were best written.

_Milverton._ I will try another. I will not be beaten.

The Pacha rested by the fountain, the flowing waters of which made an oasis in the desert.

His horse and his camel cropped with delight the green herbage near the fountain. Their shadows lay strongly and darkly upon the grass.

“How beautiful,” said the horse, “is that dark form which moves as I move; what grace, what symmetry it shows! I can hardly eat for looking at it.”

“It is well enough,” said the camel, “but look at this one which moves with me. It has all the symmetry and the grace of the other; _and then, too, it has that pretty little hump on its back_.”

A dervish passing by, who knew the language of all beasts, exclaimed, “How good is Allah, who gives to every creature its due share of vanity, so that defects seem to their owner especial beauties and merits!”

_Sir Arthur._ That is a hundred times better; but, at the risk of appearing captious, I must still say that there is an air of subtlety about it which does not quite befit a good honest fable. However, I will admit that in time, my dear Milverton, you might perhaps write a fable.

_Ellesmere._ Well, at any rate, he can write a history, for I suppose we must not call “Realmah” a story; and indeed, for my part, I believe it to be as true as almost any history I ever read.

There is one more observation I have to make about it, which has just occurred to me. It is a personal one, and it is that Fairy [here the dog looked up sharply]--Don’t look at her: she does not like to be looked at, or talked about; and it would be more delicate if I were to put in French what I am going to say, for she does not understand as much of that language as she does of English. So put yourselves into a Gallic state of mind, and listen to me.

Je trouve que Madame l’Ainah et Madame le Fée se ressemblent beaucoup.

Madame la Fée--(I hope she is not looking at me, is she?)--avec son peau--(is it “son peau” or “sa peau?” I always forget those confounded French genders; oh, “sa peau!” thanks)--avec sa peau blanche, ses yeux rouges, et sa lèvre inférieure un peu développée, est d’une beauté extrême, pas si séduisante, comme réellement rare et remarquable.

Madame l’Ainah, avec ses petits yeux enfoncés dans sa tête (comme nous a dit M. l’Auteur), ses cheveux presque rouges, et ses mains et ses pieds très larges et prononcés, mais, en même temps, très expressifs--est aussi d’une beauté extrême, mais aussi pas si séduisante, comme bien rare, et bien remarquable.

Elles jouissent, toutes les deux, d’une sensibilité très-douce, d’une intelligence très-exquise, et d’un je ne sais quoi, qui laisse beaucoup à l’imagination.

Hereupon Fairy set up a dismal howl, and then began to bark furiously. It was a most ludicrous scene. Sir John had turned away from the dog, and had been addressing his British French, spoken very loudly, very slowly, and with pauses between the words, apparently to some distant person. Fairy evidently thought that something was the matter, either that Sir John was taken ill, or that there was some enemy in the distance, and that it was her duty to come to the rescue, or to rush into the fray.

We all laughed immoderately, while Fairy continued to bark furiously, and thus the conversation was broken up, for all seriousness was gone from us during the rest of the afternoon, and until we had returned to Worth-Ashton.