>y>> 
 

 C. BELA-C 
 
 ookselUr & Sta 
 
DOMESTICUS 
 
DOMESTICUS 
 
 A TALE OF THE IMPERIAL CITY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 1886 
 
CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 GRANT & F AIRES 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
PS 
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 A NAMELESS PRINCESS, 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 FIRST DAY WITH DOMESTICUS, . . . . 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 A NEW DEPARTURE, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE PRINCESS PUGNAX, ............... 29 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, ............... 36 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 DOMESTICUS AND THE CHILDREN, ..... ...... 43 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 DOMESTICUS AFRICANUS, ............... S l 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE STRIFE OF THE SISTERHOOD, ........... 61 
 
vi COXTEXTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 COMING AXD GOING OF CONTRABANDS, 69 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 A MALADROIT PRINCE, 82 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 JUVEXTUS, 99 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 A GRANDMOTHER S APPLE-PIE, 107 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 GLORIOSA, . 124 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 GOING TO THE FRONT, 137 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 A BAD NAME, 146 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 A CATASTROPHE, 159 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 RIGHT AND WRONG OF DOWER, 170 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 LEAVING HOME, 189 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 AT A GREAT SACRIFICE, 196 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 THE IMPERIAL CITY S SHAME, 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 ELIVERANCES, 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 THE VIA SEXTA, 241 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 A MARRIAGE NOT A LA MODE, 256 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 HOME AGAIN, 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 LAST WORDS, 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I.-- 
 
 A NAMELESS PRINCESS. 
 
 IT was in the p re-esthetic period, before the age 
 of Greenbacks, in the Imperial City of the fair 
 realm of Magna Patria, that the Little Lady, whose 
 true story I am about to tell, first tripped forth on 
 the stage of social existence. Her name was duly 
 heralded when she was married, and it will doubtless 
 be duly heralded when she dies, but in these pages 
 she must be as nameless as the old woman who lived 
 in a shoe, the young woman who walked in beauty 
 like the night, or any other of the celebrities of her 
 sex, ancient or modern, who have become known 
 to fame and dear to memory, but who have never 
 been formally introduced, by name, to any circle of 
 their admirers. 
 
 Nor is her personal appearance, at any point of 
 time, to be made the subject of minute description. 
 Neither her face nor her form can be outlined by 
 pen, pencil or sunbeam. Imagination may picture 
 her the fairest of blondes, or the most brilliant of 
 
2 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 brunettes, and invest her with all the charms that 
 were ever inventoried, in fact or fiction. Possibly, 
 all that fancy shall paint her will fall short of the 
 original, around whose loveliness, as well as lineage, 
 must be drawn a light veil of mystery and reserve. 
 All else shall be plainly told. 
 
 To begin at the beginning, our Little Lady, like 
 aU heroines of history or romance, was born, once 
 upon a time. If ever a lucky star twinkled over an 
 infant s birth, it was over hers. If ever babe was 
 born with a silver spoon in its mouth, she had a set 
 of spoons before she had a set of teeth. All the 
 good fairies who ever hovered over a sleeping mor 
 tal, newly laid in crib or cradle, made her pillow 
 their daily and nightly rendezvous. If Luxury has 
 a lap, she was dandled in it, and if Fortune carries a 
 horn of plenty, it was emptied at her feet. 
 
 And so she grew, day and night, in sun and 
 shower, through all happy seasons, the birds singing, 
 the flowers blooming, the winds blowing, and the 
 earth revolving, for her special satisfaction and de 
 light, while Father Time counted out for her his re 
 serve of golden moments, with reckless generosity, 
 she spending them as freely, and making all faces 
 brighter, and all hearts happier, wherever she came 
 or went, as child, or maiden, until a merry clanging 
 of bells rang in her wedding day. 
 
 For, of course, as the Little Lady had everything in 
 plenty, lovers were not wanting, in due time. The 
 good fairies supplied them in battalions. Never 
 was fair damsel more beset by wooers and when at 
 
A NAMELESS FKINCESS. 3 
 
 last, she was won and carried off in triumph by the 
 favored suitorj it was over a legion of broken hearts. 
 
 The good fairies would have been strangely delin 
 quent if they had permitted her to marry lower than 
 a Prince ; and, fortunately, a Prince it was who 
 became her lawful, wedded husband. He was of 
 the ancient and most honorable line of Merchant 
 Princes, and his principality consisted of a vast 
 stock of Dry Goods, the staple of his princely house, 
 whose credit and renown all Magna Patria knew. 
 He, too, had been under the fostering care of good 
 fairies, and was supposed to possess all the various 
 qualities out of which Deportment can create a 
 model, and Business a success. He was very good- 
 looking, very wise and very rich, and he had a 
 modest palace of his own, on the Via Quinta, in 
 the Imperial City. So, with no one to forbid the 
 bans, this happy pair were wedded ; Love and 
 Friendship pelting them with flowers and pursuing 
 them with rice, old slippers and horseshoes, and 
 loading them with a weight and wealth of gifts 
 which seemed to say, in the language of convey 
 ancers " Know all men by these presents, that the 
 Merchant Prince, party of the first part, is held and 
 firmly bound unto the Little Lady, party of the 
 second part." 
 
 Now, the Little Lady, like all other favorites of 
 good fairies, who have been waited upon from earliest 
 infancy, and whose ideas of labor are bounded by 
 the latest style of embroidery, had never bothered 
 herself about anything under the sun. Having had 
 
4 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 a lovely time, all her life, before she wedded a Prince, 
 she naturally counted on having a still lovelier time, 
 now that she was a Princess. The first item of 
 felicity on her programme was a honey-moon, to be 
 spent in strange lands, far over sea, and this was 
 happily accomplished, without a drawback, by the aid 
 of a magical contrivance, at the Prince s command, 
 known as an unlimited letter of credit, a wonderful 
 talisman for all travellers, in Old Worlds or New. 
 
 But our Princess, being no bird of passage, and 
 fondest of her own nest and nook, looked longingly 
 and lovingly, from mountain top, and valley, and 
 gay scenes in great cities, to the home of which she 
 hoped to be the mistress and the household of 
 which she expected to be the head. She would 
 often sit, in silence and alone, in the twilight, 
 turning, with two tiny fingers of her right hand, 
 the plain golden circlet upon one tiny finger 
 of her left hand, and think how precious a symbol 
 it was of the sacred sphere in which she would be 
 invested with a central and select sovereignty, and 
 she was impatient to grasp the sceptre and begin 
 her gentle reign. The happiest hour of her happy 
 life seemed to her the one, in which, on the day of 
 her safe return the wide ocean and the broad conti 
 nent left behind as pleasant memories she sat, in 
 the quiet evening, at her own table, in the palace 
 of her Prince. He had prepared a rare surprise for 
 her; and, by means of messages sent, by magical 
 art, under sea, long in advance, had so arranged as 
 to gather around his board, in her honor, the friends 
 
A NAMELESS PRINCESS. 5 
 
 she loved best, so that all things seemed ready to 
 her hand and heart, and she had only to seat herself 
 in the throne and be Queen. No wonder her eyes 
 sparkled with delight and her cheek glowed with 
 satisfaction. And when, late in the night, after the 
 last, lingering guest had departed, the Little Lady 
 walked up and down the stately rooms, pausing, now 
 and then, to survey herself in some resplendent 
 mirror, as if in reassurance of her own identity, or 
 to toy with some choice souvenir, or sit, for a 
 moment, in a gilded chair, her heart was well nigh 
 overflowing with happiness and hope. She could not 
 help dancing for very joy, and clapping her jeweled 
 hands she cried aloud 
 
 " Now I am going to keep house ! " 
 
 No sooner had the Little Lady uttered these words 
 than all the good fairies, who, as we have already seen, 
 had been busily engaged, ever since she was born, 
 in buttering her bread on both sides, gave a sudden 
 and unanimous, though inaudible, groan, shed a sim 
 ultaneous, though invisible, tear, and waved a con 
 certed and final, though imperceptible, farewell. 
 
 This was cruel, but it was inevitable ; for it was 
 the immemorial law and custom of that region and 
 realm that whensoever any one, Princess or dame 
 of low degree, old or young, became a housekeeper, 
 all the good fairies who had been in active service 
 on her behalf, no matter for how long a time, or 
 with what good intentions and results, were imme 
 diately put upon the retired list, and a certain 
 
6 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 malevolent spirit of the air and minister of chaos 
 superseded them, and took entire charge and com 
 mand, in their place and stead. Now this malignant 
 genius was named DOMESTICUS. 
 
 And it was on this wise with Domesticus. When 
 any lady of the land, little or large, went to house 
 keeping, he must be summoned. He was sure to 
 respond to the call, for this was his designated and 
 predestined task and duty; and, as he loved mischief 
 more than he hated work, he was always at hand, 
 and would appear on command, by word of mouth, 
 or on the customary ringing of a bell. But, like 
 Proteus of old, from whom, it may be, he had 
 descended, he had a million different shapes, and 
 there was no one so wise as to know, beforehand, 
 under what aspect he would come, of what race, or 
 age, or sex, or presence, or what name he would 
 use, for he could transform himself, at will, and was 
 a wonderfully ingenious and inventive spirit, and 
 incomprehensible withal. 
 
 The Little Lady had often heard about Domes 
 ticus and his doings, but she had never feared him, 
 partly because courage, and not fear, was natural to 
 her, partly because she had never bestowed much 
 thought upon him, but chiefly because she was 
 always so inclined to think well of every one and 
 everything that she had brought herself to entertain 
 a good opinion even of this wicked sprite. She had 
 been told many things concerning him, and always 
 to his disadvantage, by her relatives, lineal and 
 collateral. She knew he had a bad name, but, to 
 
A NAMELESS PRINCESS. j 
 
 tell the truth, that bad name of his had rather 
 attracted her sympathies toward Domesticus. She 
 was so full of all human pity and tenderness that 
 her heart had, somehow, gone out to him, in the 
 vague hope that whenever, in her future happy life, 
 she should come into closer contact with him, she 
 might be able to do something to reclaim him and 
 make him as good and lovely as she was herself, 
 and as she wanted all the world to be. If she should 
 ever have a palace of her own, she wanted it to be 
 a bower of bliss, wherein even Domesticus himself 
 would be subdued to the spirit of the place, and 
 become docile and dutiful, out of sheer sympathy. 
 If he should come to her in manly form, he would 
 thus, although a servitor, be invested with a knightly 
 sense of loyalty and chivalry ; and if he should be 
 represented by one of her own sex, she would grow 
 to be as graceful and neat handed as Hebe. All 
 this, and more, in a gush of girlish feeling, she had 
 once confided to a grim-visaged aunt, at whose palace 
 she chanced to be a guest, and who, being of mature 
 age, and, at the time, under a special infliction and 
 visitation of Domesticus, tartly told her that she 
 was a green girl and knew no more about this arch 
 enemy than the babe unborn. 
 
 But now she has ceased to be a green girl, and 
 she is in her own house and home, with the will and 
 the way to work out to their fulfillment all these 
 bright and beneficent designs and, on the morrow, 
 her gentle hand shall be laid on the monster s neck 
 and leviathan shall be tamed. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 FIRST DAY WITH DOMESTICUS. 
 
 THE sun rose, on the following morning, in a 
 cloudless sky, over the Imperial City. Its 
 shrines and temples, its Forum and its many pal 
 aces, threw back, from pediment and tower and 
 clustered roofs, the bright early beams, as they fell 
 upon the great wedge-shaped city, lying between 
 two noble rivers whose confluence formed a spa 
 cious harbor where the ships of many nations came 
 and went; for the Imperial citizens were traders 
 with all the world. And yet, strange to say, in 
 their perverseness, while they scooped out and 
 fashioned deep basins and slips on the sides of both 
 rivers, wherein the myriad vessels of all countries 
 could float and have safe shelter and mooring, they 
 dumped the soil and dredgings from these same 
 basins and slips into the waters of the narrow and 
 sinuous channels, leading from the harbor to the 
 deep sea, so as to block and hinder the access and 
 egress of the very commerce for which they pro 
 vided at such pains. This was of a piece with all 
 their municipal methods, and may serve to show 
 what little progress they had made in the great 
 science of local government, which, nearer home, 
 8 
 
FIKST DA Y WITH DOMESTICUS. g 
 
 we have brought to such rare perfection. But, 
 aside from a continuing and chronic mal-adminis- 
 tration, it was a fair and prosperous metropolis, 
 wherein the ineradicable civic indifference to the pub 
 lic weal was counterpoised by a ceaseless eagerness 
 and skill in private enterprise; and so it grew in 
 wealth and power, with steady growth. Nor was 
 there, in the wide world, a city where hands and 
 hearts were more readily opened to the cry of want 
 or suffering, or quicker to aid in all good works 
 for human kind. 
 
 The palace of our Prince was within the selected 
 limits set apart, by common consent of the citizens, 
 to patrician dwellings, and consecrated to an all- 
 powerful divinity, Societas by name, whose votaries 
 were numerous, and whose priestesses were versed 
 in many mysteries and held sway over all who 
 dwelt or came within the charmed circle of their 
 influence. Like all the houses of its class, in the 
 pre-^Esthetic period of Magna Patria, it was a mar 
 vel of exterior clumsiness and of interior unfitness. 
 Many sestertia of the lawful money of the realm 
 had gone from the Prince s purse into bulky, out 
 side stone work, hideous to the eye, and into mon 
 strous products of the deforming arts of plasterers, 
 upholsterers, and decorators, equally abhorrent, 
 within doors, and many more into a net-work of 
 leaden conduits by which, under false pretences 
 of cleanliness and comfort, poisoned air and death- 
 dealing gases were made to permeate every nook 
 and corner of the mansion. 
 
I0 DOMEST1CUS. 
 
 But, according to their light, and after their blun 
 dering fashion, the patricians of the Imperial City 
 made for themselves elegant and luxurious habita 
 tions, whose appliances for warmth, and light, and 
 convenience, in many ways, were far superior to 
 those existing, at the time, in the best dwelling- 
 houses of Mater Patria, the main source from which 
 the Imperial citizens derived their ideas of home 
 with all its traditional environment of good things. 
 
 To the Little Lady, the palace was a supreme 
 satisfaction and, aided by the sense of security and 
 rest with which it seemed to be pervaded on the 
 night of her arrival, her slumbers were undisturbed 
 and long protracted. The Prince was early astir 
 and abroad, leaving the palace without waiting for 
 his morning meal, which he expected to take in 
 that quarter of the Imperial City in which his 
 principality lay. The Princess, considerately left to 
 her repose, did not rise until the day was well 
 advanced and the bustle on the broad Avenue, on 
 which she looked out from her windows, seemed to 
 rebuke her for having slept so long. Her happy 
 thoughts immediately took up again the golden 
 thread they had dropped as she had fallen asleep. 
 She was now, more than ever, the mistress of the 
 mansion and of the model home to be created 
 within its walls. She knew that the service of the 
 previous evening had been improvised for the occa 
 sion, according to the directions of the Prince, who, 
 in his wisdom, had confided the arrangements to a 
 junior of his house, versed in the arts and mysteries 
 
FIRST DA Y WITH DOMESTICUS. \ \ 
 
 of Dry Goods, and specially familiar, as one of the 
 ancient and worshipful guild of Salesmen, with all 
 manner of festive rites. He had easily contrived 
 the entertainment and loaded the Prince s board 
 with good cheer, providing, among other choice 
 exotics, the skilled attendants who vanished when 
 their work was done, leaving the palace, swept 
 from the crumbs of the supper and garnished with 
 the flowers of the table, ready for the coming of 
 Domesticus. 
 
 The fore-thought of the Prince had looked beyond 
 the evening repast and made some provision for the 
 immediate wants of his household. Through the 
 same friendly intervention, Domesticus had been 
 summoned, and the Princess was shown a trig and 
 twinkling-eyed damsel, flitting about the palace, in 
 the guise of a housemaid who, as it seemed to her, 
 might be the ideal Hebe of her fancy, and she was 
 also told that there was a perfect Treasure below 
 stairs. To this extent had the prudent Prince 
 undertaken to settle the preliminaries of what he 
 hoped might be a lasting peace with Domesticus, 
 little knowing the crafty adversary with whom he 
 had to deal. 
 
 The Princess, after getting wide awake and nearly 
 dressed, was somewhat puzzled to conjecture what 
 had become of the neat-handed Hebe on this bright 
 morning, and why she was not at her door, betimes, 
 with proffers of aid and service meet for the toilette 
 of a lady of her high degree. But she came not, 
 nor was the sound of dust pan, hand brush or 
 
I2 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 broom to be heard in the halls or on the staircase, 
 nor was she to be seen, when the Little Lady, inquis 
 itively and somewhat furtively, took an observation 
 with her door ajar. Then she bethought her that 
 Hebe was doubtless busied in arranging a dainty 
 repast for her mistress a satisfactory solution, not 
 that the Little Lady, any more than any other well- 
 conditioned Princess, cared, in the least, what she 
 had to eat or drink in the morning, or at noon, or 
 night, but because, in her new relation to it, as the 
 head of the house, breakfast began to appear to her 
 in the light of an Institution. It would be neces 
 sarily incomplete on this first morning, as the Prince 
 was absent, and the great chest of silver had, ever 
 since the wedding day, lain undisturbed in the vaults 
 of Aurum & Argentum, the great conjurers who 
 could transmute anybody s and everybody s gold 
 and silver into tea sets, dinner sets, jewelry and all the 
 other necessaries of life, and then keep them safe and 
 sound, at moderate rates of storage. Only a special 
 and unique service of small, antique silver, a few rare 
 and costly pieces, had the Prince brought home with 
 him from the Old World ; these had been exhibited 
 and admired during the evening, and left in the 
 unlocked drawer of the onyx-topped buffet, the 
 Princess taking no thought of the fact that, from 
 time immemorial, it had been the invariable custom 
 and duty of every good housekeeper to cradle such 
 treasures in a basket, and take them as nearly to bed 
 with her as circumstances would permit. 
 
 When the Princess had ended her toilette, and 
 
FIRST DA Y WITH DOMESTICUS. j 3 
 
 taken a final look at herself in the glass, she went 
 down stairs. The house was dark, in spite of the 
 brilliancy of the outer day, and an ominous chill 
 struck through her as she entered the room she had 
 last quitted the night before, and found it still 
 unopened. No ray of enlivening sunshine greeted 
 her at the threshold of the banqueting hall, but only 
 light enough to disclose, at a glance, that no dainty 
 repast, nor any visible sign of its preparation, was 
 in view. The room was still, and cold, and vacant, 
 but the quick eye of the Princess, taking in every 
 thing on the instant, perceived that the upper 
 drawer of the buffet in which had been deposited, 
 over night, the Prince s precious pieces of small 
 silver, was open. A swift, prophetic pang shot 
 through her soul ; she rushed to the drawer and 
 the truth flashed upon her. Hebe, the neat handed 
 but light fingered, had fled, and, with her, all the 
 small silver, every ounce, every pennyweight, every 
 grain. 
 
 This was the first sword thrust of Domesticus. 
 If it did not pierce the Little Lady s heart, it was 
 only because he never despatched his victims at 
 once, but loved to keep them at his cruel mercy. 
 The Princess did not sink, nor scream, nor swoon. 
 She simply stood aghast. But, even in her surprise 
 and horror, she cast no railing accusation against 
 Domesticus, or his emissary, the fugitive Hebe; 
 but only heaped reproach upon her own sweet self, 
 putting no blame on the Prince, or on the junior 
 prince, who had brought this serpent into her Eden. 
 
! 4 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 " It is all my fault, my fault," she said, " I ought 
 to have taken it up stairs when I went to bed." 
 
 Then, as the question came home to her, " What 
 am I to do ? " her thought reverted to the Treasure 
 below as her sole immediate refuge and succor. The 
 bell was close at hand, and she rang it with a quick, 
 convulsive jerk, which set in motion a distant, half 
 smothered, discordant tingle, which seemed like the 
 suppressed, mocking laughter of some concealed 
 demon. She well knew that the bell was the sum 
 mons of Domesticus, but if he were represented, in 
 those subterranean precincts of the palace, by a 
 Treasure, there was nothing to dreacl, and if the 
 Treasure would not come to the Princess, the 
 Princess must go to the Treasure. And this, after 
 long, unanswered ringings of the bell, she deter 
 mined to do, much wondering what might next be 
 fall her in her new domain. 
 
 She descended to the lower floor, and as the 
 door \vhich admitted her into this unexplored ter 
 ritory closed behind her, found herself in deeper 
 darkness than before. A glimmer of light showed 
 what she divined must be the penetralia of the 
 Treasure, because in one corner she descried the 
 outline of the tall cylindrical boiler, lifted, like a 
 huge foreboding finger, to warn her off. But she 
 took no heed and pressed on, not looking down 
 ward, and so, not seeing the obstruction which 
 blocked her way, a mass of matter in human shape, 
 against which she stumbled and across which she 
 fell, her fair forehead striking the hard floor, on 
 
FIRST DA Y WITH DOMESTICUS. i 5 
 
 which she lay stunned and unconscious. The Little 
 Lady had tumbled over the Treasure ; the unpleasant 
 tale of whose temptation and fall an empty flagon, in 
 close proximity to her prostrate form, too plainly told. 
 Of the subsequent events of that eventful morning, 
 the Little Lady could never give a satisfactory ex 
 planation to herself, or to any one else. She has a 
 vague recollection of a return to consciousness, and 
 of seeing, in shadowy outline, the uniformed and 
 helmeted figure of a Curator of the public peace, 
 who, having kept special watch and ward over the 
 palace, during the absence of the Prince, was sur 
 prised, on the morning after his return, to find the 
 iron door, which led into its lower regions, wide 
 open, as it had been swung back by the departing 
 Hebe, the order of whose going had not stood upon 
 leaving closed doors behind her. Accordingly, in 
 the due discharge of his duty, the Curator entered, 
 to survey the premises, at the opportune moment of 
 the catastrophe I have just described. Deserted as 
 she was by all the good fairies, and sore beset as 
 she was by Domesticus, it seemed a wonderful piece 
 of good fortune that such aid and comfort should 
 have come to the Little Lady in her extremity, but 
 she is firmly persuaded that this was the manner of 
 her deliverance, and she never looked, thereafter, at 
 one of the big-buttoned corps to which her deliverer 
 belonged, without a thrill of gratitude. It was he 
 who conveyed the Princess, up the stairs, to the 
 nearest lounge, and who conveyed the Treasure, 
 down the street, to the nearest lock-up. 
 
jg DO ME STIC US. 
 
 A bevy of the Little Lady s friends of her own 
 sex and age happened to come tripping along, 
 shortly afterwards, to tender their congratulations 
 on her safe return and to inspect her new home, and 
 although their congratulations were congealed into 
 condolence, they were very helpful to her in her 
 sore distress. They sat about her, bathing her 
 bruised brow, administering all the restoratives 
 within reach, and, like the chorus of a Greek play, 
 making the air resound with alternate bursts of 
 sympathy for the Little Lady and maledictions 
 against Domesticus. Each one had her special 
 recital of his misdeeds, recent and remote, a dark 
 catalogue of unwritten and unpunishable crimes, 
 against which there was no relief and no redress, 
 and which were rilling the bosoms of families with 
 gloom and despair. So the lovely choristers sur 
 rounded the Princess, thrusting out their tiny, high- 
 heeled boots, waving their snow-white, bangled 
 arms, shaking their jeweled fists, and almost shriek 
 ing, as they recounted these unnumbered woes. 
 
 The fair visitants did not confine themselves to 
 the chorus ; they gave all heed to ministering to the 
 wants of the victim of Domesticus, and to that end, 
 went through all the doors, drawers and cupboards, 
 up stairs and down stairs, as if they had been armed 
 with search-warrants, and foraged throughout the 
 premises for whatever might be serviceable in the 
 emergency. Nothing came of it all, except a single 
 cup of tea, which they served with a vast amount 
 of laughing, and chattering, and merriment, at finding 
 
FIRST DA Y U lTII HOMESTICUS. l y 
 
 themselves in a palace actually, for the time being, 
 deserted by Domesticus. It was, in reality, a pil 
 laged outpost, which had been stormed, and sacked, 
 and then left behind by the invader, but to the 
 young ladies, it seemed only like a great house 
 having a holiday, and enjoying it in silence. So 
 they rummaged about, without let or hindrance. If 
 there had been a skeleton in any closet, it would 
 have been brought to light, but the closets were 
 bare, as the Little Lady s boxes had not been 
 unpacked, and as she ruefully said, she had nothing 
 to show her friends except her own damaged face. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 A NEW DEPARTURE. 
 
 IV i EANWHILE, not Rumor with her hundred 
 IVI tongues, but the faithful Curator with his sin 
 gle brogue, had brought to the Prince the tidings 
 of the disaster. He lost no time in setting in 
 motion so much of the detective enginery of the 
 law as lay within his reach, for the pursuit and 
 apprehension of the fugitive and spoliating Hebe ; 
 and then hurried homeward, with the help of such 
 substitutes for seven-league boots as the prosaic 
 character of the times on which he had fallen would 
 permit. On his way, he bethought him that the 
 Princess, in her helpless condition, would be 
 wholly without the means of carrying on the affairs 
 of the household, and the prospect of possible 
 starvation not being a pleasant one, he determined 
 to go, at once, to a neighboring and friendly sor 
 cerer, supposed to be on the most familiar terms 
 with Domesticus, as one of a guild by whose 
 agency, to a large extent, his countless emissaries 
 were quartered on the inhabitants of the Imperial 
 City. 
 
 This sorcerer, in common with all of his fratern 
 ity who possessed and plied the same magical arts, 
 18 
 
A NEW DEPARTURE. X Q 
 
 was able to command, at will, the presence of the 
 varied shapes in which Domesticus appeared for 
 every variety of service. Like the slaves of the 
 lamp in the Arabian Nights, they came, when 
 summoned, at the bidding of their superiors, whose 
 dens were easy of access, so that any and all 
 householders, driven to seek the aid of Domesti 
 cus, were free to come and try their fortune with 
 the help of the sorcerer, who by his art could call 
 these visible spirits from contiguous deeps, not vast, 
 but, usually, quite circumscribed, redolent with 
 divers odors, and confused with the noise of many 
 tongues. 
 
 These sorcerers, as a spell to conjure with, con 
 trived to press into their service that honest poly 
 syllabic word " Intelligentia" ; they painted it, in 
 large characters, over all their lintels as if they were, 
 in some sort, the specially accredited dispensers and 
 custodians of intelligence, whereas the commodities 
 in which they dealt were often at the farthest remove 
 from any such faculty, but this was only another 
 of the many strange devices of Domesticus. So 
 our Prince thought himself well served, when after 
 divers incantations, the sorcerer caused a succession 
 of shapes to pass before him, from which he made 
 careful selection, and was assured that they would 
 re-appear at his summons, within his palace, and 
 do his bidding and that of the Princess, in all things, 
 and strange to say, the Prince, with all his wisdom, 
 went his way firmly believing these promises would 
 be fulfilled ; such was the glamour which Domes- 
 
2Q DOMESTICUS. 
 
 ticus and his cunning allies, the sorcerers, could 
 cast over the strongest and clearest minds. 
 
 But when the Prince came to his Lady s chamber, 
 and told her what he had done for her solace and 
 comfort, she refused to be comforted. Domesticus 
 had given her what he had given thousands of her 
 patient, suffering sex afore-time, a headache, of his 
 own peculiar and malevolent invention, which made 
 its victims turn a deaf ear and a sightless eye to 
 every word or sign of consolation. So the Prince 
 was forced to sit solitary at his board, while the 
 Princess bemoaned her fate, above stairs, and 
 Domesticus gloated, in secret, over the misery he 
 had wrought in the first calamity this loving pair 
 had encountered." 
 
 The destructive work of this first day, complete 
 as it may seem, was only a harsh prelude and dis 
 cordant overture to what Domesticus had in store 
 for the Little Lady. He well knew she was brave 
 of heart and stout of will, and not to be crushed at 
 a blow, and he kept in reserve many a heated 
 plowshare, over which he meant her path should lie. 
 And brave of heart and stout of will she was, 
 emerging from this first, fiery ordeal somewhat 
 crest-fallen and chagrined, but not bating hope or 
 courage, and with faith soon re-established in her 
 future. 
 
 Nor was she one whit disheartened by the flurry 
 and storm which followed the Prince s venture with 
 the sorcerer, the outcome of which was nothing 
 but dire failure. The Prince soon came to see that 
 
A NEW DEPAR TURE. 
 
 21 
 
 with all his good intention and amiable action, 
 excused, if not justified, by the emergency of the 
 case, he had really been playing into the hands of 
 Domesticus, who, being himself an arch disorgan- 
 izer, was never so well pleased as when the house 
 hold order was subverted by such irregular pro 
 ceedings as this one on the part of the Prince. He 
 had, in his supposed wisdom, but real folly, rushed 
 in where even the angels of well conducted homes 
 feared to tread. He had violated the cardinal law 
 by which the peace of families subsists. He had 
 rashly usurped a function which belonged exclu 
 sively to the Princess. Not that she, sweet soul, 
 complained, but that Domesticus maliciously made 
 use of this infraction as a weapon of torture, and 
 instructed the new comers that as they had enlisted 
 at the call of the Prince they owed no allegiance or 
 duty to the Princess, and accordingly, so soon as 
 she assumed command, they were in open revolt. 
 The poor Prince s efforts to compel subordination 
 were wholly ineffectual, and his carefully selected 
 and picked corps deserted and decamped. 
 
 The reins once more in her own hands, as she 
 fondly hoped, the Princess determined to make a 
 bold push to assert herself and her supremacy. 
 Then it was that in her own right, and in her own 
 behalf, she consulted the sorcerers and found, to her 
 dismay, that while they were on the alert to serve 
 her, the spirits whom they called came not only in 
 questionable but most questioning shapes. She, 
 who came to examine, and scrutinize, and select, 
 
22 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 suddenly, by some strange witchery and transfor 
 mation, was turned into an object of suspicion, to 
 be herself cross-examined, catechised, weighed in 
 balances, and, too often, found wanting. How 
 many were there in family? Was there a baby? 
 Did they eat by courses ? How early did they get 
 up? How late did they go to bed? Would there 
 be somebody else to do everybody s work ? She 
 was made to feel like a culprit before a committing 
 magistrate, without a culprit s privilege of waiving 
 an examination, or declining to criminate herself, 
 and she was glad to escape from the grasp of her 
 inquisitors, with a mingled sense of humiliation and 
 defeat. 
 
 Then it was that her wants were, according to the 
 custom of the place, heralded on all the columns, set 
 up for this purpose, in the Imperial City. Then it was 
 she discovered that Domesticus had so sapped and 
 subverted the foundations of morality, that mankind 
 in general, and womankind in particular, claimed to 
 be absolved from every obligation of truth or veracity 
 in certifying as to his representatives. He seemed 
 to have granted a kind of dispensation in the use 
 of the vernacular, whereby such old time terms as 
 "sobriety," "honesty," "industry," "fidelity," and 
 the like, were no longer real names for real qualities, 
 but were reduced to the level of mere trademarks, 
 labels, and brands, for the wares of Domesticus, who 
 so juggled and contrived with these and other 
 devices, as to delude a confiding public into the 
 notion that all the virtues could be hired at a fixed 
 
A NEW DEPAR TURE. 2 3 
 
 rate per month a draft on popular credulity which 
 would have been dishonored at sight in any other 
 sphere of sublunary affairs. 
 
 Then, moreover, it was that the Little Lady kept 
 on courageously ringing her bell, and Domesticus 
 kept making his appearance, in all the wonderful, 
 inexhaustible variety of his forms. Sometimes he 
 would come in what seemed to be personified slow 
 ness, and then everything was irretrievably behind 
 time, whereat the Prince was greatly exercised, 
 because Punctuality was a prime virtue of Dry 
 Goods, and Domesticus, with his ally Procrastina 
 tion, the thief of Time, made a pair better fitted for 
 a Penitentiary than a Palace. Then he would appear 
 in a tearing, slashing shape, so that the Prince and 
 Princess were whirled along the courses of a meal, 
 as though they were eating for a wager depending 
 on the speed of the performance. The next incum 
 bent would be of a pattern so small that the evening 
 lamps could not be lighted without the aid of chairs, 
 or the tall windows locked without step-ladders ; to 
 be replaced, anon, by some stalwart figure, march 
 ing and countermarching as if trained in the ranks 
 of Penthesile, Queen of the Amazons. One day, 
 it would be stupidity, in densest form, under whose 
 confusing misdirection, Princes, and Princesses, and 
 other notables, would be left standing in the ves 
 tibule, while vagrants, in disguise, were ceremoni 
 ously ushered into the inner precincts, whence they 
 could slyly retire with any chance souvenir avail 
 able to their thievish touch. The next incumbent 
 
24 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 would possess a rarely endowed intelligence, coupled, 
 perhaps, with an undiscovered and undiscoverable 
 mystery, given to the rehearsing of dramatic or 
 lyric fragments in the stilly night, in close proximity 
 to speaking tubes or furnace flues, quite too high 
 strung and high toned for daily service. But how 
 often did Domesticus delight in tormenting and 
 tantalizing the Little Lady with some well seeming 
 maiden form, fair to see, full of sweetest promise, 
 and shortest lived performance, making the house 
 hold work, for the time, a delightsome thing and a 
 forecast of permanent peace, but, presently, loving 
 the youthful green-grocer, or the stalwart butcher, 
 not wisely but too well, and thereupon becoming as 
 limp as one of her own dish-cloths, and losing all 
 working or waking sense in Love s young dream. 
 For such an one the daily round of duty would 
 soon give way to picnics, predestined invariably to 
 take place in bedraggling thunder-squalls, or to 
 midnight entertainments, requiring a fortnight to 
 prepare for them, and three weeks to recover from 
 them all, ending, too often, in the final exchange of 
 the certain and safe shelter and comfort of a well- 
 ordered home for a blank in the lottery of a chance 
 marriage. 
 
 Yes, Domesticus was not only, as I have already 
 said, like Proteus with his myriad shapes ; he was 
 like Argus with his hundred eyes, or Briareus with 
 his hundred hands, or the Hydra with his many 
 heads. In fact, he was worse than these old offend 
 ers, because, while they, severally and respectively, 
 
A NE W DEPA R TURE. 2 5 
 
 belonged to some specific nation or place, and had 
 a well defined pedigree of their own, Domesticus 
 could assume any nationality at pleasure, and change, 
 as he saw fit, his name, his country, or his skin, as 
 well as his spots, which he was always changing, 
 for he no sooner got comfortably into one than he 
 was uncomfortably on the outlook for another. 
 
 He was an arch cosmopolitan. His drag net was 
 thrown over every nook and corner of the globe; it 
 seemed to the Princess as if her premises were a 
 sort of rendezvous for all its races. Now, it was 
 Domesticus Anglicanus, who had stood, in state, 
 behind Dukes and Earls, and had come, at last, to 
 assert his supremacy as a sovereign, among his 
 fellow sovereigns of Magna Patria. Now, it was 
 Domesticus Gallicus, whose cordon-blcu was the 
 unfailing symbol of revolution and anarchy, below 
 stairs. Then, it was Domesticus Scotus, as obsti 
 nately resolute to upset all pre-existing order at a 
 single blow, as was Jenny Geddes to topple over the 
 Papacy with a toss of her wooden stool. Again, it 
 was Domesticus Germanicus, whose coming and 
 going were like blasts from the forests of Norse- 
 land, and the hidden things of whose culinary com 
 pounds no one could discover or digest. But 
 chiefly, and at all times, it was Domesticus Hiber- 
 nicus, the most constant and the most centrifugal of 
 all the forces that Labor ever contrived for the service 
 and discipline of mankind, and let loose upon un 
 suspecting householders, with its conservation of 
 destructive energy ; its readiness to make or mar ; 
 
2 5 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 its possibilities of chance success and its illimitable 
 incapacity, alike unendurable and indispensable ; 
 the two-edged, unsheathed sword of the adversary, 
 always sharpened with ready wit and pointed for 
 instant action, and poised for cut or thrust at once 
 a social defence and a social terror. 
 
 What the Little Lady did, and what she suffered 
 during this period of her warfare with Domesticus, 
 cannot be recounted in detail. What wars of contend 
 ing races were waged with her cutlery, and what 
 fires of persecution were kindled with her coal, it 
 would take too long to tell. The wrath roused into 
 action between the contending votaries of rival 
 shrines and opposing altars was unextinguishable, 
 and the Little Lady came, at last, to think that Do 
 mesticus could make an auto da fe or a love feast 
 minister equally to his malignant purposes, and that 
 he could transform Religion herself into a Fury. 
 Heretics who abjured the Pontifex Maximus and 
 denounced him and his works were driven out, at 
 the point of the boning knife and the larding pin, 
 while they, in turn, pommelled his devout adherents 
 with gridiron and saucepan, until the Little Lady in 
 despair, like Gallic, drove the contending zealots 
 from her jurisdiction, and was sorely tempted to 
 supplement her next declaration of wants with the 
 startling suffix " Atheists preferred ! " 
 
 Thus everything went wrong ; her pillow was wet 
 with many tears during the long vigils of the night, 
 and her heart strings were stretched, by day, to 
 their utmost tension. But they never broke. Some- 
 
DEPARTURE. 37 
 
 times, there were gleams of hope and a vista of 
 prospective peace, but only at brief intervals and 
 for short periods of time. Of course, her one great, 
 animating idea was to please the Prince, who was 
 nothing if not hospitable, and who loved to see the 
 Princess in her grace and beauty, presiding over a 
 well-spread board, surrounded by congenial spirits. 
 With all his wisdom, he could never be quite 
 brought to comprehend why anything and every 
 thing which pleased his appetite, and ministered to 
 his satisfaction, in other places or palaces, could not 
 be made immediately, and permanently, available 
 under his own roof. This was one of the many deep 
 and subtile contrivances of Domesticus. Nothing 
 was more to his depraved taste than to plant the 
 germs of dissatisfaction in the sacred soil of home, 
 by pointing sharp contrasts between its necessary 
 limitations and the large possibilities beyond it. 
 The Prince, for whose daily noontide refreshment, 
 or occasional evening social delectation, when else 
 where than in his palace, there was the ready service 
 of hands skilled to minister to every variety of taste, 
 and proficient in the arts they exercised, was too 
 apt to fancy that a like degree of perfection was 
 an easy thing to attain within his own domicile. 
 
 Or, perchance, he would sit, a serenely satisfied, 
 but wholly irresponsible guest, at some symposium, 
 contrived at special pains and outlay, and bring 
 home minute reminiscences of its completeness and 
 perfection, every one of which would send a pang 
 through the bosom of the Princess. She strove 
 
 O 
 
2 3 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 and struggled and endured ; she braced herself for 
 every fresh encounter with Domesticus ; she sat 
 through tedious hours of entertainment, with the 
 heroism, if not the serenity, of a martyr at the stake, 
 silent and uncomplaining, dreading disaster with 
 every dish, from the opening demi-valve to the 
 closing demi-tasse ; apprehensive, from the moment 
 she missed the salt in the soup to the moment 
 when she found it in the ice cream ; conscious of 
 every blunder ; self-condemning at every slip ; and 
 only too glad to fly, at the earliest moment of 
 escape, from what seemed a throne of queenly 
 state, but was, in reality, a rack of torture. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PRINCESS PUGNAX. 
 
 T7 VERY intelligent reader who has followed thus 
 C/ far, in these pages, the fortunes and misfortunes 
 of the Little Lady, will understand that she was by 
 no means solitary and alone in her state of suffer 
 ing. Of this she herself was well aware, but so 
 staunch was her courage and so strong her will, 
 that for a long time, she carried on the unequal 
 warfare, single handed, seeking no succor, but like 
 Ajax, in his long, midnight combat, only praying 
 for light, that she might not be left wholly at the 
 mercy of her foe, who was at home in the darkness 
 and loved it better than the light. 
 
 After a series of successive defeats, culminating 
 in her apparent total discomfiture, as she sat one 
 day, curled up, as she was wont to describe her 
 position, in a favorite and capacious easy chair in 
 her own quiet solarium, or sunny boudoir, to which 
 she often resorted for meditation and repose, and 
 after donning her invisible thinking cap, and revolv 
 ing in her mind the many instances of her weak 
 ness and want of ability to cope with her wily 
 enemy, she came to feel the absolute need of some 
 friendly help and counsel. It was sad to be forced 
 
 29 
 
3 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 to the conclusion that neither love nor money 
 would avail to win over this inveterate foe, or to 
 counteract his eyil ways. Of love, she had by nature 
 an inexhaustible supply, and of money, the Prince 
 was lavish, and what could not these potent forces 
 effect? What, indeed, except the conquest of 
 Domesticus ? Thus musing, she formed a sudden 
 resolve which was promptly executed. A few 
 moments of preparation sufficed, and with the light 
 est of footsteps, if not with the lightest of hearts, 
 she made her way to a neighboring palace, where 
 dwelt an ancient and venerable housekeeper whose 
 sage counsel she proposed to seek. 
 
 The name of this wisest of women was the 
 Princess Pugnax. She was a veteran dowager of 
 vast experience, within doors and without She 
 had a reputation among housewives which could 
 not be excelled, if indeed it could be equalled. Her 
 mahogany, her oil cloths, her brasses, her silver, 
 her linen, were the envy of her contemporaries. 
 They were quoted in social circles, as government 
 bonds are quoted at the Stock Exchange and in 
 Bank parlors. You could eat off her floors ; the 
 heaviest finger could be drawn over the polished 
 tops of her mantels or tables without detecting a 
 particle of dust ; her pantries and presses could be 
 opened at any hour of the day or- night, without 
 revealing a sign of disorder ; her furniture looked 
 as if it were on a perpetual dress-parade. It was 
 generally believed that she had beaten Domesticus 
 on his own ground. The current and accepted 
 
THE PRINCESS PUG N AX. $ l 
 
 report was that she had established a Reign of Terror 
 in her precincts, and set up a permanent guillotine, 
 as the only effectual method of dealing with 
 Domcsticus and his representatives, and that she 
 had achieved a signal success. It was said that 
 decapitations were as common with her as dinners. 
 Sometimes, the whole force would be dealt with 
 summarily, by a preconcerted coup dctat, and 
 there would be a head in the kitchen sink ; another 
 in the butler s tray; a third in the laundry tubs; a 
 fourth in the sewing basket; a fifth in the house 
 maid s dustpan, and so on, according to the various 
 appliances in use in the mansions of the Imperial 
 City, of which those I have specified are the equiv 
 alents in our own metropolis. Domesticus, with 
 his ready resources and magic art, could, it is true, 
 always contrive to rescue his votaries, however 
 mangled, as easily as Minerva protected her prote 
 ges in the Homeric wars, spiriting them away, put 
 ting the missing heads on the right shoulders, or 
 supplying new ones, and forming out of these 
 restored victims a kind of old guard for his more 
 perilous enterprises. Then he would invade the 
 Pugnax territory with fresh levies, who would, in 
 turn, be routed and destroyed by the relentless 
 Princess, whose reputation rose with each suc 
 cessive slaughter, until she ranked as a Field-Mar 
 shal or Generalissimo among surrounding Prin 
 cesses. But as the reserves and munitions of war 
 of Domesticus were inexhaustible, the faster the 
 gaps in his ranks were made, the faster they were 
 
32 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 filled, and as it was in his savage nature to feel a 
 kind of grim satisfaction in the misery even of his 
 own followers, he took a double delight in the heavy 
 load he laid on the Princess, and the burdens she 
 imposed on them. In truth, he was well satisfied 
 to let her have an apparent supremacy, well know 
 ing it was only titular, and that she was, really, as 
 much in vassalage to him as was Herod the Great 
 to the Roman Caesar. So, if ever there was a vic- 
 trix victim it was the Princess Pugnax. Her repu 
 tation had to be maintained, and in order to keep 
 her record at its high standard, her whole life 
 became a succession of campaigns and dearly 
 bought victories, the price of a seeming triumph 
 over the wily Domesticus and his hobgoblin 
 legions. Meanwhile, she openly and persistently 
 defied him and maintained a brave show of inde 
 pendence, and due respect was paid her accord 
 ingly. 
 
 In the case of the Little Lady, this respect 
 amounted almost to awe, and she thought herself 
 very bold to ask help, in her sore straits, from this 
 lofty dame. She approached her as an oracle and 
 divulged the story of her griefs, in an ascending 
 scale of intensity which reached its climax with the 
 despairing cry " What am I to do with Domes 
 ticus?" 
 
 The chief characteristic of the Princess Pugnax 
 was rigidity. Her form was rigid, her features were 
 rigid, her dress was rigid. Nature and Time had 
 kept her so submerged in the indurating waters of 
 
T11K / AY.V( 7-:.S.V PUGNAX. 33 
 
 strife that she seemed to have suffered a gradual 
 process of petri faction. Her glance was stony, her 
 voice was lui -d, ami her fingers closed on the Little 
 Lady s hand, like the claw of an extinct animal. 
 There v.a^ no spot on her hardened nature to soften 
 at the tears, or melt at the sorrows, of her weaker 
 sister. She heard her confession, and passed sen 
 tence upon her, without delay or preface, as upon a 
 self-condemned criminal. It was all the Little 
 Lady s own wilful fault. It was all for the want of 
 a little order, a little forethought, and a little firm 
 ness. The strong hand and the tight rein had been 
 lacking. Had she rung up Domesticus in the 
 morning? Had she seen that every living human 
 being, in the house, was in bed, before she closed her 
 own eyes for the night? Had she kept everything 
 under lock and key ? Had she proper weights and 
 measures ? Had she given out the things herself? 
 The Little Lady was painfully conscious that she 
 had given out, in a very different sense from that 
 which the dowager intended, but she admitted that 
 she had been derelict at all points, whereupon she 
 was given to understand that she was a doomed 
 woman. Domesticus was an enemy, against whom 
 not to take the initiative was to be lost in advance. 
 In the war with him there was no quarter and no 
 discharge. His emissaries were outlaws, for whom 
 there should be no amnesty ; sleepless vigilance, 
 incessant marches, counter-marches, bivouacs, sur 
 prises, captures and massacres must be the order of 
 the day and of the night. It was a life-long cru- 
 3 
 
34 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 sade, with no summer quarters, no winter quarters, 
 no truces, not even a parley between pickets. The 
 Little Lady sat aghast at the deliverances of this 
 scarred veteran as she showed how fields in this 
 way might be won in the warfare with Domesticus, 
 and how, by any other art or articles of war, they 
 were sure to be lost Domesticus, she said, was the 
 arch enemy of all order. His hand was against 
 everything, from a pewter cup to the stars in their 
 courses. The groat desire of his wicked heart was 
 the reign of universal breakage, and confusion, and 
 ruin ; and unless vows were made on all the house 
 hold altars of the land that he himself should be 
 bound, hand and foot, and brought into due sub 
 jection, chaos would come again. 
 
 " But is the fault all on the side of Domesticus ?" 
 said the Little Lady. 
 
 " Certainly it is. Whose fault can it be but his ? 
 It is the total, universal depravity of his nature." 
 
 " But may not moral suasion have some effect ? " 
 
 " Moral fiddlesticks ! Have you never heard the 
 story of Gehazi ? He is a good specimen of the 
 whole race. If his master could not keep him 
 from going to the bad, what can a poor housewife 
 do, who cannot work miracles and cure lepers ?" 
 
 "And you really think there is no room or hope 
 for improvement ?" said the Little Lady, sadly and 
 softly. 
 
 " Not the least ; things will wax worse and worse. 
 The great point with Domesticus is to get the most 
 wages for the least labor ; what he wants is to play, 
 
THE PRINCESS PUG N AX. 35 
 
 instead of working, to rule instead of serving, to 
 get all the ignorant, inefficient housekeepers under 
 his thumb, and to fasten on them the curse of being 
 made the servants of servants." 
 
 Just at this point there was a sound as of the 
 distant crash of falling china, and the Princess Pug- 
 nax started, and sprang to her feet, with a jarring 
 movement, as if a whole system of unoiled ma 
 chinery had suddenly been set in motion by some 
 irresistible, unseen force. 
 
 " I gave her warning last night, for being in the 
 house five minutes late and this is her revenge. 
 Excuse me a moment, my dear." 
 
 " I must go now ; thank you, very, very much, for 
 your good advice," said the Little Lady, rising and 
 taking leave, only too glad to cut short her visit, 
 under cover of the catastrophe which, she felt sure, 
 was impending in the Pugnax palace. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 
 
 SHE came out, into the sunshine of the street, as 
 from a prison house of despair. She seemed to 
 herself like an escaped convict, liable at any instant 
 to re-arrest. She had gone for comfort, and had 
 received condemnation. She had asked for bread, 
 and had been given a stone. Happily, she was of a 
 temperament buoyant enough to make the best of 
 everything, and so to find sermons, with practical 
 applications, even in the stones which the Princess 
 Pugnax had thrown at her. She would put into 
 immediate practice a part of the Pugnax system. 
 She would provide a bell for rousing the sound 
 sleepers on her top story, and she would ring it 
 herself, gently, but firmly. She would have patent 
 .scales and a steelyard, and some standard weights 
 and measures, but these could be adjusted and em 
 ployed with a gracious touch as well as with the 
 cruel hand of an executioner. She would give out 
 all the things herself, but it should be done with a 
 smile and not a frown. It was not in her nature to 
 substitute law, all at once, for love. Her whole 
 being revolted against the cold, harsh doctrine of 
 the stony-visaged dame, and yet, if order, and firm- 
 36 
 
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 37 
 
 ness, and a tight rein, were the prime conditions of 
 success, a little severity in appearance, which could 
 always be tempered by underlying tenderness, might 
 be desirable, if not indispensable. 
 
 Accordingly, the next break of dawn inaugu 
 rated the new campaign. The Prince was startled 
 from his morning nap by a harsh jingle, such as 
 had never before disturbed his repose, and awoke to 
 descry the Princess tugging at a stout silken rope, 
 pendent on the wall, within easy reach of her pillow. 
 Her hair was dishevelled, and her eyes were some 
 what wild, for she had lain awake half the night in 
 order to be ready to ring the bell at the proper 
 and appointed moment, but there was a fixed pur 
 pose in every pull of the cord, and even in the 
 pause which followed its vibrations. 
 
 " What are you about?" asked the Prince. 
 
 The Princess briefly explained that this was the 
 beginning of new and better things ; that the bell 
 which startled him, because it was an unusual 
 sound, was one to which he would soon become 
 accustomed ; that it was to ring out all laziness 
 and sleepiness from the household, and ring in 
 a time of better breakfasts, and general domestic 
 bliss. 
 
 The Prince did not think she could keep it up. 
 
 She was determined to keep it up if it kept her 
 up all night. 
 
 " Suppose you should be ill ? " 
 
 She would have to be very ill, yes at death s 
 door, before she would be unable to reach the bell 
 
3 3 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 cord; besides she was not ill, but unusually well, and 
 hoped to keep so. 
 
 " Suppose they won t get up? " 
 
 " Then they will all have to go." 
 
 " Suppose there should be guests in the palace 
 and they should be waked out of their best sleep, 
 at such an unseasonable hour, what would they 
 think?" 
 
 " They would think they were in a place where 
 order reigned, which is heaven s first law, and ought 
 therefore to be enforced as early in the morning as 
 possible. Besides, have you not always insisted 
 that guests must take the risk of whatever goes on 
 in the house they visit?" 
 
 " Ordinary risks, yes, but this is something extra 
 ordinary," said the Prince. 
 
 " What is there extraordinary about it ? The 
 Princess Pugnax has done it for years and years, 
 and you ought to be glad and thankful if I can do 
 as well as she does." 
 
 "I don t believe it will last," said the Prince, 
 sighing over his lost nap. 
 
 " That is the way you always discourage me," 
 said the Princess, and she repressed some unavailing 
 tears, while the stony-hearted Prince closed his eyes 
 and started to count the odd numbers, from one to 
 five thousand, in the hope of thereby reinstating 
 himself in the slumber from which he had been 
 so rudely roused. 
 
 Betimes, on the same day, everything eatable and 
 drinkable, every bar and cake of soap, every box of 
 
;r/:/r;//7:s- AXD MK.-ISCKES. 39 
 
 matches, every paper of starch, every grain of salt, 
 was secured behind locked doors, and the process 
 of giving out by weight and measure was begun, 
 with a degree of solemnity which was meant to be 
 most impressive, but which, in the irreverent eyes of 
 Domcsticus, was so supremely comical that if he 
 had had any visible sides he would have split them 
 with laughter. 
 
 When the Prince came home to dinner, he found 
 the Little Lady wearing a strangely defiant air 
 which was quite alarming. She had a long, thin 
 key, slung at her girdle ; there was a grating sound 
 in her voice; her lips were compressed, and when 
 she kissed him, as her custom was, twice, she 
 startled him by saying that she had given out all 
 he could have for two days. It gradually dawned 
 upon him that the new regime, ushered in by the 
 early morning bell, included an entire reorgan 
 ization of the establishment, and that all supplies 
 were being doled out by the exact quantity. The 
 household had been put upon rations, and what was 
 not by weight was to be by measure. Like a wise 
 prince, as he was, he forbore any protest or objec 
 tion, having, during the day, felt a little ashamed of 
 his heartlessness in the matter of the bell. 
 
 The Little Lady was thus left without obstruction 
 in the pathway of reform. The only drawback to 
 the new system of the giving out of supplies was 
 that her pound was a very variable quantity. Some 
 times, it corresponded to our troy weight, and 
 sometimes, it was avoirdupois, and sometimes, it 
 
4Q DOMESTICUS. 
 
 was of a standard entirely her own, wholly unrec 
 ognized by custom or statute. She did her best, 
 however, to keep her hand steady and her scales 
 true, and to dispense her stores according to a just 
 economy, affecting to disregard all the signs of dis 
 pleasure and disgust, which, like lowering clouds, 
 betokened a coming storm. 
 
 Domesticus knew perfectly well how to out 
 manoeuvre and out-general the Little Lady, and, 
 after amusing himself for some time by causing her 
 to be interrupted in every conversation, wakening 
 her out of every afternoon nap, startling her at the 
 moment of seating herself at the table, and even 
 breaking in upon her most sacred moments of 
 privacy, with demands for things she had forgotten 
 to give out, or which some unexpected emergency 
 required to be doubled in quantity, he marshaled 
 his forces for a mutinous revolt. Possibly the 
 weights and measures might have been tolerated 
 for a longer period, but the too punctual ringing of 
 the bell, which as the clock struck the hour of ten 
 at night, like the curfew of William the Conqueror, 
 tolled the knell of parting for the lingering fol 
 lowers, below stairs, was beyond endurance. 
 
 One fine morning, the Prince found himself at his 
 breakfast table without a drop of coffee, or a morsel 
 of bread, or a pat of butter. There was no sugar, no 
 milk, no syrup for possible cakes, no salt for expected 
 eggs ; in place of the accustomed chop, there was 
 an empty platter ; and worse than all, there was no 
 explanation, but only ominous and foreboding 
 
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 4I 
 
 silence. Finally, upon compulsion, the declaration 
 was extorted that there was nothing eatable in the 
 house, outside of the store-room. The Little Lady 
 appeared, in all the loveliness of her early morning 
 attire, and her eye took in the situation at once. 
 She had given out all the needed supplies for the 
 day, with the liberality of a Princess, heaped up, 
 pressed down, and running over, but they had been 
 secretly, or surreptitiously, kept back, and now the 
 pretended deficiency was to be laid at her door, and 
 she must surrender her key, or her empire would 
 be in revolt Surrender she would not. But the 
 Prince must have his breakfast, and a salt-cellar 
 without salt was something not to be tolerated for a 
 moment. She said not a word, but descended with 
 an unfaltering step into the arena. The insurgents 
 were prepared for her coming. The whole stock 
 of supplies had been diverted by their connivance, 
 and she was to be starved into submission. In the 
 pause which followed her appearing, the combined 
 charge was made. She was no lady ; no decent per 
 son could live with the likes of her; all the house 
 hold divinities were invoked against her stinginess, 
 and the ultimatum was announced the key must 
 be delivered up as the price of peace. 
 
 The Princess stood firm ; she charged back upon 
 the mutineers their treachery and treason ; the 
 combat thickened; the Prince descended in alarm; 
 the tumult raged, and when order was at last 
 restored, and the Little Lady, who had maintained 
 her position to the end, declared that she would 
 
42 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 proceed to the store-room, and give out the things 
 for a breakfast which must be prepared on the 
 instant, she discovered, to her dismay and confu 
 sion, on putting her hand to her girdle, that the 
 key was gone. Whether she had mislaid it by 
 accident, or whether, by some artful trick or device 
 of Domesticus, it had been spirited away into the 
 limbo of lost things, will never be known. It could 
 not be found ; resort was had to violence ; the store 
 room door was forced and the wants of the house 
 hold supplied. 
 
 With that breaking in, although never ac 
 knowledged by the Little Lady, the whole short 
 lived system of weights and measures, and daily 
 dispensations was broken up. There was delay 
 in adjusting a new lock. The substituted key, 
 somehow, would not cling to her dainty waist. 
 The way to the store-room seemed longer. The 
 door was oftener left open. By degrees, the ringing 
 of the curfew became a neglected duty, and one 
 morning, when the Little Lady started from her 
 slumbers, to find the hour long past when she 
 ought to have sounded the awakening alarm, as she 
 pulled the silken cord, with sudden force, it gave 
 way, broke at the ceiling, and falling upon her neck, 
 and shoulders, and slender form, encircled her like 
 the coils of a serpent. 
 
 It was never replaced. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DOMESTICUS AND THE CHILDREN. 
 
 THE Upas tree which Domesticus had planted in 
 the Little Lady s bower of bliss, whose roots 
 \veie underneath the foundation, and whose branches 
 overshadowed the roof, bore some of its deadliest 
 fruit in the Nursery. As the palace, in due time, 
 was occupied by new comers it was painful to see 
 how they would get into the grasp of Domesticus 
 as soon as they were born. He lay in wait for 
 them, like an Ogre of the old school. The first 
 little princess was the special victim of his devices. 
 The Little Lady considered that what her new 
 maternity most lacked was experience, and Domes 
 ticus undertook to supply the deficiency in the guise 
 of an elderly female who had been the mother of 
 thirteen children. It was soon apparent that she 
 regarded herself as charged with the care of two 
 infants, instead of one, and that mother and babe 
 were equally subject to her sway. Her experience 
 was like the stream of Time. It began in a remote 
 past, and meandered, through long intermediate 
 periods, down to the moment of her present service. 
 It bore on its bosom the undisclosed secrets and 
 the hidden scandals of many generations. In the 
 
 43 
 
44 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 abstract, it embraced everything within the compass 
 of human affairs; in the concrete, it was mainly 
 conversant with catnip tea, paregoric, and pins. It 
 must be remembered that, at the time of the birth 
 of the Princess Prima, for this was her name, 
 neither the telephone, the electric light, nor the safety 
 pin, were known to the inventive arts in Magna 
 Patria, if indeed they are known there to this day ; 
 and that the culling of such simples as catnip, and 
 the mixing of such draughts as paregoric, were part 
 and parcel of the orthodox cruelties practiced upon 
 helpless infancy. To these inflictions Domesticus 
 lent a ready and willing hand. Dean Swift s famous 
 plan for preventing the increase of population in 
 Ireland, by the systematic slaughter of all Irish 
 babies, which was only one of his many huge, 
 coarse jokes, would at all times have been dead 
 earnest to Domesticus. Why else did he envelop 
 each new-born member of the human family in 
 layer upon layer, and fold upon fold, of impervious 
 material, making the hapless victim more fit for the 
 companionship of mummies than of mammas? 
 Why else persist in covering up its tiny breathing 
 apparatus, so as to make its incipient efforts at 
 respiration almost impossible of success, and so as 
 to induce apoplexy in the infant of a day ? Why 
 else persist in excluding the free, fresh air of hea 
 ven, as an element unfriendly to a child of earth ? 
 Why else persist in forcing into its thimble-sized 
 stomach five times the volume of fluid it could 
 contain, and then subject it to the never-ending, 
 
DOMESTICUS AND THE CHILDREN. 
 
 45 
 
 still-beginning trot, on inelastic knees, such as those 
 of the little Prima s dry nurse Experientia ? 
 
 Meanwhile, in spite of Domesticus, the fair flow 
 eret grew on, in a natural, healthy way of its own, 
 resisting these baneful influences with all the minia 
 ture forces with which Nature had endowed her. 
 But to no purpose. At every outcry, Domesticus 
 was ready with a fiction, founded, only too truly, on 
 fact. The little darling was abused, so it was, 
 everybody abused it, so they did, and it must have 
 some catnip. Thus was poison poured into the ear 
 of earliest infancy, while poison was being poured 
 down its throat, and as the imagined occasions of 
 abuse multiplied, so did the catnip increase in quan 
 tity and strength, the doses of paregoric became 
 more potent, and the pins more frequent. The 
 young Princess struggled and fought, with all the 
 feeble might of her legs and lungs, and made night 
 and day, by turns, hideous with her protests, but 
 the infant Hercules himself could not have stran 
 gled the serpent Domesticus if he had crawled into 
 his cradle. The previous question of the morning, 
 the subsequent question of the evening, and the 
 intermediate question of the day, was very apt to 
 be, " What makes that child cry?" 
 
 " It is because she is abused, she is," said Exper 
 ientia. 
 
 " I fear it is total depravity," said the Prince. 
 
 " I believe it is pins," said the Little Lady. 
 
 And, on a careful investigation it generally 
 proved to be pins. 
 
46 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 Thereupon, after a time, pins were proscribed ; and 
 Prima and the succeeding little prince and princess 
 were sewed up every morning, and ripped up every 
 night, and worked over and over, like old time sam 
 plers, until they had stitches in their sides, and their 
 backs, and all over. 
 
 But the Little Lady, to whom the new heart 
 throbs, which began when she felt the first touch of 
 Prima s velvet cheek upon her breast, were a fresh 
 inspiration, only waited to recruit her strength, in 
 order to rally all the forces of instinct and affection 
 to the defence of her offspring. Windows were 
 thrown open, flannels were torn off, the vile mix 
 tures went to the ash-heap, and Prima s little bare 
 pink legs, and arms, and breast, and back, were bathed 
 in sunshine and pure air, as freely as in the tem 
 pered waters of the bath, or in the overflowing 
 fountain of maternal love. Here, in a double 
 sense, was a new life for the Princess. The fresh 
 existence, whose tiny tendrils reached forth to draw 
 support and sustenance from her own life, seemed 
 to have its counterpart in the responsive tenderness 
 of her sustaining and protecting love, so different 
 from any earlier feeling, so transcendent and 
 unique; at first, the simplest instinct groping in the 
 dark and the dawn, but how soon expanding, until 
 in its all-embracing care, it seemed a second Provi 
 dence in the sphere of home. 
 
 One thing was certain : Domesticus should not 
 come between her and her children. Sooner than 
 have them gobbled up by this arch destroyer, she 
 
DOMESTICUS AND THE CHILDREN. 47 
 
 would devour them herself, as did Saturn. She 
 would do all the washing, and dressing, and undress 
 ing, and putting to sleep, and waking up. No voice 
 but her own should soothe or chide; no hand but 
 her s caress or correct. Alas ! the delegation to 
 Domesticus, at least in part, was only too soon a dire 
 necessity. The papoose of the Imperial City will 
 not submit to being suspended from a bracket, or 
 borne on the back, while the daily round of mater 
 nal duties is being performed. Neither the prime 
 val forest, nor the aboriginal methods of Magna 
 Patria, could find place within metropolitan limits. 
 Civilization was the ally of Domesticus. 
 
 But the Princess was determined not to be entan 
 gled again in the meshes of any experience except 
 her own, and in her efforts at maternal independ 
 ence she went from one extreme to another ; from 
 the wisdom of the herb-mixing ancient to the 
 unwisdom personified in one of those youthful 
 forms, with pendent braids, and high-necked aprons, 
 whom Domesticus sent forth, duly commissioned 
 to mind children, and carefully instructed not to 
 mind their parents. Divers specific rules and 
 regulations he imparted, besides, out of sheer mal 
 evolence. The child, if propelled in a miniature 
 chariot, should always be stopped under the full 
 blaze of the sun, while the propelling attendant 
 exchanged views, on topics of common interest, 
 with other propellers. The child when able to 
 walk, should be jerked over gutters and along side 
 walks, by the hand, so that the mechanical power, 
 
4 8 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 gained by the leverage of the arm, might be 
 brought to bear upon the entire frame, in aid of its 
 permanent distortion and dislocation. Excursions 
 to remote places, in the social interest of Domesti- 
 cus ; surreptitious supplies of indigestible sweets ; 
 threatenings of swift and awful retribution in case 
 of disclosure of any doubtful doings of Domes- 
 ticus; the peopling of the dark with monsters 
 and hobgoblins ; the investing even of innocent 
 ragpickers and sweeps with supposed diabolism 
 towards the entire infant population of the globe 
 are only samples of these special, unsealed instruc 
 tions. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Little Lady s vigilance, though 
 sorely taxed, was never intermitted. Her mother- 
 liness was always at the meridian. It was radiant 
 with all die brightness of her nature, and it had a 
 potency which was irresistible. So it happened 
 that the wiles of Domesticus were held in check, 
 and most of the mischief he plotted against the 
 children came to naught, and in spite of the many 
 trials and many failures of the struggle, there were 
 some bright memories of loving and faithful service 
 to the little ones, from hands and hearts, which, 
 though under the original jurisdiction of Domes 
 ticus, and owing native allegiance to him, were so 
 naturalized in the special domain of home that they 
 came to share its sacred associations and affections. 
 This was a part of the open reward of mother-love 
 which so often can be seen only in secret. What 
 watchings were hers through long nights of suffer- 
 
DOMKST/Cl S AND / //A CHILDREN. ^ 
 
 ing, made so much harder lor the watcher because 
 the little sufferer could not describe or declare its 
 needs, except by cry, or moan, or convulsive move 
 ment ; what patient waiting, alike in hope or fear, 
 for the dreaded, or impatiently expected crisis, of 
 disease; what bearing of all the myriad burdens 
 which childhood in its thoughtless, or perverse, 
 or, far oftener, its undisciplined, or unsound, con 
 dition, puts upon the parental heart; and what 
 never ceasing care, carried in its inmost core, by 
 day and by night, at home, abroad and everywhere. 
 
 She was never separated from the children by sea 
 or land, rarely was she beyond call, never did she 
 leave them a moment for any pleasure at the cost 
 of duty. And so they grew, under her eye, and 
 hand, and heart, and the little Prima, the firstling of 
 the flock, soon expanded into rare beauty, and love 
 liness, which were shared by a sister and brother 
 who came, in time, to be her playmates. 
 
 The Prince was of very little use in the care or 
 training of the children. If they were little ailing, 
 he thought they were very ill. If they were very 
 ill, he thought they were going to die. He would 
 misapprehend colic for temper. He thought four 
 o clock in the morning an unreasonable hour for a 
 frolic with a wide-awake baby. He soon tired of 
 protracted vigils and the walking up and down, in 
 the small hours of the night, with the small occupant 
 of his. arms persistently bent on keeping as many 
 members of the family, as possible, astir and out of 
 bed. He was too strict; he was too indulgent; he 
 4 
 
,j O DO ME STIC US. 
 
 corrected too harshly; he punished injudiciously; 
 he forgave without waiting for due penitence ; he 
 allowed prohibited things ; he proposed impossible 
 projects ; he made irredeemable promises ; he did 
 his best to spoil the whole brood, but he never 
 interfered with the reign of the Queen-mother, and 
 in this, he shewed himself a discerning Prince, 
 whose example is to be commended to all fathers 
 who fancy there can be two sovereigns in the same 
 empire, or any substitute, in love or law, for a 
 mother s heart, or a mother s care. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DOMESTICUS AFRICANUS. 
 
 IF I have omitted, thus far, any mention of that 
 prime factor in the forces of the enemy with 
 whom the Little Lady was waging her wean- war, 
 Domesticus Africanus, it is because his importance 
 requires a special and separate treatment. His 
 dark shadow fell across the path of our Princess at 
 an early point of her progress. The ineradicable 
 hostility of Domesticus Hibernicus to this dusky 
 co-worker in the sphere of household service was 
 something which had often proved an explosive 
 fire-damp in her subterranean quarters. Domesti 
 cus Africanus was an exotic which could not thrive 
 unless in company with a kindred stock. His 
 presence was a sure signal of disturbance, espe 
 cially at meal times, below stairs, as Domesticus 
 Hibernicus drew the line of non-intercourse just 
 where Shylock drew his, in his relations with the 
 Venetian Gentiles ; he would wait with him, wash 
 with him, scrub with him, gossip with him, but he 
 would not eat with him. The pre-eminent social 
 qualities of Domesticus Africanus in his native cir 
 cles were perennial sources of disorder in the 
 domain of duty ; his adaptation for elegant leisure 
 
 5 
 
52 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 was a continuously demoralizing element, and his 
 religious enthusiasm was too exalted in its vocal 
 pitch for the precincts of a palace, and too absorbing 
 in its requirements for the routine of daily work. 
 
 Besides all this, at the period in the history of Magna 
 Patria at which my story has now arrived, Domesti- 
 cus Africanus was assuming an importance that was 
 overshadowing and supreme. He was not indige 
 nous to that fair realm, nor had he come of his own 
 will, from beyond seas, to its shores. As my read 
 ers may all have learned, long ago, Magna Patria is 
 a cluster of sister sovereignties, born, after agoniz 
 ing birth-throes, into the family of the nations, and 
 bound together by a compact, meant to be firm 
 enough to keep them all under a common rule; 
 elastic enough to leave them all free to rule them 
 selves within their separate and several bounds ; and 
 broad enough to open and let in new and equal 
 members of the Sisterhood, as vacant spaces of the 
 fair realm should be occupied. 
 
 Brought, as a captive, from his native tropics, 
 Domesticus Africanus had been held in bondage, 
 throughout the Sisterhood, until, in course of 
 time in those parts of it where his labor was not 
 especially required, because the zone was so 
 tempered that no man was driven by the sun 
 from his mid-day work, he was suffered to go free 
 and of his own will to work, or not work, which 
 was often more to his taste, whereas in those 
 parts where labor must be under a torrid heat, 
 
DOMESTICUS AFRICANUS. 53 
 
 which he alone could best endure, he was kept en 
 slaved. 
 
 And thus it came about that an invisible line was 
 drawn across the fair land of the Sisterhood, on the 
 nether side of which Domesticus Africanus was a 
 thing, and a chattel, and was bought and sold, and 
 on the upper side of which he was a man and a 
 person and so, if being on the nether side, he could 
 contrive to get to the upper side and stay there, a 
 magical change was instantly wrought in him, 
 whereby he became a person, instead of a thing, 
 and belonged to himself, instead of the master 
 or mistress whom he had left behind. But he was 
 always liable to be pursued, and captured, and sent 
 back, because it was a part of the compact of the 
 Sisterhood that every such runaway might law 
 fully, be caught and reclaimed, and in such case, 
 be delivered up, like any other stray animal, on 
 proof of property, to the rightful owner, and there 
 upon become once more, and immediately, a thing 
 and not a person. 
 
 It was quite otherwise, however, if his master 
 or mistress happened to bring Domesticus Afri 
 canus across the invisible line, and while on the 
 upper side, he could contrive to get away from 
 them, because then they might not reclaim him, 
 but the magical change was a permanent one, 
 and he became a person, and belonged to him 
 self, by a free and absolute title. These arrange 
 ments were so complicated that Domesticus 
 Africanus was a long while in coming to any 
 
54 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 definite understanding of the possible conditions 
 under which he might cease to be a thing, and be 
 come a person; and he was, in the main, well satis 
 fied to be and remain a thing, and not to become a 
 person, so long as he did not know the difference, 
 and nobody told him. 
 
 It is easy to see that as Domesticus Africanus 
 grew and multiplied on the nether side of the invis 
 ible line, and his progeny came to be counted by 
 the million, and all these were property, just as 
 much as the cattle on the hills, or the crops in the 
 fields, the good people who possessed all this property, 
 which constituted the main part of their wealth, 
 and who believed in their hearts that it was a part 
 of the duly established order of created things that 
 they should have and enjoy their own, naturally 
 came to be very jealous of any interference with 
 their rights. In their eyes, the holding of Domes 
 ticus Africanus in bondage was an Institution, and, 
 by and by, a great many of them began to think, 
 and to assert, that it was a divine Institution, to be 
 upheld and perpetuated by all possible means, and 
 this not only in their own selfish interest, but for 
 the well-being of Domesticus Africanus. He could 
 not thrive, they claimed, by himself, but must be 
 under guardianship, and pupilage, and government. 
 A child of the tropics, he must be kept in the glow 
 and warmth of the sunshine, and being inclined by 
 his nature to bask in it, in idleness, he must be made 
 to labor, for his own good, and his service should 
 be gratuitous, as a due return for the protection and 
 
DOMESTICUS AFRICANUS. 
 
 55 
 
 nurture he received, and for which the devotion of 
 a life-time was only a fair equivalent. 
 
 Accordingly, they were greatly indignant against 
 the good people who, living on the upper side of 
 the invisible line, where there was no ownership in 
 Domesticus Africanus, claimed and insisted that he 
 ought, everywhere, to be a person and not a thing ; 
 and that to own him, or hold him, or buy him, or 
 sell him, was a wrong and a crime. The people 
 of this way of thinking hated the invisible line, 
 although they could no more abolish it than they 
 could wipe out the Equator. They hated the In 
 stitution, which so far from being divine, they de 
 clared to be of the Devil. They hated the compact, 
 which made it possible to transform Domesticus 
 Africanus into a thing after he had once chosen to 
 be a person, and made his choice effectual by get 
 ting to the upper side of the line. Carrying these 
 ideas into execution, they devised ways and means 
 by which, if Domesticus Africanus was once so 
 lucky as to get both feet across the line, he could, 
 either above ground or under ground, be caught 
 up and spirited away, beyond reach of pursuers, 
 or possibility of capture. They raised a great 
 outcry against the Institution ; they declared that 
 it ought to be abolished, and cut up, root and 
 branch, and were so loud and violent that they 
 came, in their turn, to be hated and dreaded by the 
 whole of the Sisterhood on the nether side of the 
 invisible line, as much as they themselves hated 
 the Institution. 
 
56 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 So, in trie nature of things, a conflict was inevitable. 
 More and more, the good people to whom Domes 
 ticus Africanus was a thing, and not a person, 
 became alienated from the good people to whom 
 he was a person, and not a thing. They tried, by 
 every means, to protect themselves against spoliation, 
 but their riches were of a kind very apt to take to 
 themselves legs and run away. In vain did they stop 
 the ears of Domesticus Africanus, so that he should 
 not hear the outcry; in vain did they blindfold 
 his eyes and shackle his limbs, so that he could 
 not find his way, if he would, across the invisible 
 line. He became a perpetual source of discord 
 and disturbance. No one was permitted to teach 
 him to read, or to write, or to think, and yet, in 
 spite of all these precautions, nothing was more 
 common than that he would scamper off and get 
 over the line, and then it would be a world of 
 trouble to catch him and get him back, and very 
 often, he was never caught or got back, but was an 
 absolutely lost thing to his master or mistress. 
 
 It gradually became more and more hazardous 
 for the good people of Netherdom to come, even 
 for a season, to the upper side of the invisible line, 
 with so much as a single specimen of Domesticus 
 Africanus in their train, because of the keen scent 
 which the Abolishers, as they were called, had 
 for this species of game, and their many expert 
 ways of bagging it, in its own interest, to the 
 utter extinction of all pre-existing rights of prop 
 erty. 
 
DOMEST1CUS APR 1C ANUS. 57 
 
 All this was exceedingly aggravating, and the 
 wisest and shrewdest of the good people with 
 whom the Institution was the corner stone of 
 their social fabric, came to see, clearly, that unless 
 by their own efforts, and with the help of their 
 fellows on the upper side of the line who were not 
 in accord with the Abolishers, they could gain 
 and keep the ascendency in the Sisterhood, they 
 would always be at a disadvantage, and the Institu 
 tion would be in constant and increasing danger. 
 They must rule or be ruined. 
 
 Thus they were, of necessity, from their point of 
 view, unable and unwilling to let bad enough alone. 
 They must needs make things worse, by desperately 
 claiming and proclaiming that the Institution was a 
 vital element, to grow with the growth and strengthen 
 with the strength of the fair land of the Sisterhood, 
 lest the just equilibrium between its various members 
 should be disturbed. And whenever new domains 
 came to be added, and the old boundaries were 
 enlarged to take in broad areas, where there were 
 no lines, visible or invisible, they insisted that the 
 Institution should be set up wherever they chose 
 to plant it, and make it grow in the virgin soil of 
 these new parts and places. But to this the good 
 people of the upper side of the invisible line would 
 not agree. In the main, they were willing enough 
 to abide by the compact, and not to meddle with 
 the Institution, or with Domesticus Africanus. They 
 were even willing to aid in silencing the outcry 
 against them, and in suppressing the obnoxious 
 
5 8 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 Abolishers, and multiplying the ways and means 
 by which the compact as to the fugitives should be 
 made effectual, and to bring out shot-guns and 
 soldiers, if need be, to make sure the capture and 
 return of any stray chattel who, in the effort sur 
 reptitiously to become a person, had been seized 
 by his owner and must be relegated to serfdom. 
 
 All this seemed right and just or, at least, neces 
 sary, however it might shock some sensibilities and 
 go counter to some consciences ; but here the line 
 of concession was drawn, and while the compact 
 must be kept, and the Institution tolerated where it 
 existed, not a foot, nor an inch, of new ground should 
 be yielded to it. It should be kept penned and 
 chained within the limits where it belonged, as its 
 victims were sometimes penned and chained by 
 their taskmasters ; and it should be girdled round 
 with fire, until it worked out its own destruction 
 and stung itself to death. And this was a new 
 and growing grievance, and prolific source of dis 
 content to the masters and mistresses of Domes- 
 ticus Africanus. 
 
 On both sides of the invisible line, some things 
 were forgotten. On the upper side, they forgot 
 that the Institution had, aforetime, been a part of 
 their own social system, and that it had ceased to 
 exist with them, not altogether because the fathers 
 on that side of the line were any more virtuous or 
 just than their fellow-men, but because they did not 
 need it any longer. On the nether side, they forgot 
 that the fathers of the Sisterhood never meant that 
 
DOMESTICUS AFRICANUS. $g 
 
 the Institution should remain as a permanent thing, 
 to become a dominating power, but only to be 
 endured as an evil, at some time to cease ; and, 
 especially, they forgot that there were restless spirits 
 at work, the world over, sweeping away all institu 
 tions, and wiping out all lines which hindered the 
 human race in the pathway cleared for it by that 
 mighty and mysterious power which men call 
 Progress. 
 
 The good people of the nether side, being all of 
 one accord about the Institution, made the further 
 great mistake of supposing that the good people of 
 the upper side, except the obnoxious Abolishers, 
 were so busy, tilling their acres, sailing their ships, 
 twirling their spindles, building their houses, sell 
 ing their wares, and otherwise getting gain, that 
 they would be quite indifferent about the matter, 
 and ready to submit to almost any sacrifice, rather 
 than to provoke a serious disturbance about the 
 Institution. In this confidence they went on, wax 
 ing more and more persistent and violent, until 
 they openly declared, that unless they could be 
 protected in all their rights as they claimed them, 
 they would no longer remain in the Sisterhood, 
 but would go out from it, and be no more a part 
 of it, and would confederate among themselves as 
 a separate people, so as by all means to save the 
 Instituticn all of which seemed idle threats to the 
 good people of the upper side. 
 
 Meanwhile, slowly and surely, the foundations 
 had been laid of a new power, strong and resolute 
 
60 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 to maintain, in their integrity, the ancient landmarks 
 the Fathers had set, and to resist, by all means, 
 within the compact, the baleful forces which threat 
 ened to destroy the unity of the Sisterhood. It 
 gained the ascendant at the very crisis of the 
 Nation s fate. In the person of its chosen leader, it 
 gave a new name to the roll of the world s martyrs 
 and emancipators. It knit the hearts of all loyal 
 Union-loving men, as the heart of one man, in the 
 long, dark struggle. It won for itself the right to 
 this simple word of praise, that as the faithful servant 
 of the Sisterhood, it saved albeit at a great price 
 the birthright of Freedom which no mad endeavor 
 could destroy. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE STRIFE OF THE SISTERHOOD. 
 
 AS we are not concerned so much with the for 
 tunes of the Sisterhood, as with those of one of 
 its lowly and lovely daughters, it is needless to trace, 
 in detail, the story of this discordant time. Suffice 
 it to say, that the outcome of the discord was a sea 
 son of hideous ruin and combustion dire. A fire 
 brand from the upper side was flung into the nether 
 side, by a wild, frenzied onslaught, within its bor 
 ders ; the lawless outburst of a handful of enthusiasts 
 numbering less than a score of men, under a leader 
 whose lifeless body soon dangled from a felon s 
 gibbet, in expiation of his crime, but whose name, 
 caught up and resounded on a million lips, became 
 a battle cry, the like of which was never heard be 
 fore among the sons of men. 
 
 Firebrands from the nether side were soon flying, 
 thick and fast One after another, the sisters below 
 the invisible line cast off the compact, and declared 
 themselves quit of its obligations. At last, one 
 April morning, where, over a wave-washed rampart, 
 far off on the nether side, a bit of bunting, bearing 
 a star-sprinkled patch of blue, and streaked with 
 alternate stripes of white and red, was fluttering in 
 
 61 
 
5 2 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 the early breeze, a puff of white smoke rose in mid 
 air, landward, and a cannon shot was fired, with 
 deadly aim, upon the dingy, wind-worn symbol of 
 the union and sovereignty of the Sisterhood. A 
 single shot, but its sudden, sharp concussion dis 
 lodged the avalanche of War, as, in the high Alps, 
 the chance discharge of a huntsman s rifle loosens 
 the long suspended, tottering masses of snow and 
 ice, and hurls them down the mountain s shattered 
 side, with ruin in their track. 
 
 A single shot; but it summoned the whole Sis 
 terhood to arms, on the one side to sever it in 
 twain, on the other side to save it alive in its unity. 
 It startled, and wakened out of their fancied security, 
 the sleepers and dreamers on both sides of the in 
 visible line. It splintered, and shattered, and crushed 
 out of shape, old expedients, and pretexts, and sub 
 terfuges, and made many a refuge of lies as unsafe 
 a shelter as a tall tree in a thunder storm. It 
 opened a clear, wide space, through which, as if a 
 rift had been cut into the heavens, was seen in a 
 new light, what was true, and right, and needful, to 
 be done and suffered, and in which it was revealed 
 that, on both sides of the line, men were made of 
 such stuff that they would rather die than submit 
 to what, in heart and conscience, they thought was 
 wrong. 
 
 And so the good fight to save the Sisterhood 
 began, and went on, drenching the fair land with 
 blood, filling its homes with mourning, furrowing 
 its soil with the graves of heroes, but welding, in 
 
THE STRIFE OF THE SISTERHOOD. 63 
 
 its furnace fires, a new and purer Sovereignty, to be 
 divided no more by separating lines, and sullied no 
 longer by the dark stain which was the source of 
 all the baleful strife. 
 
 At first, it was intended by the good people of 
 the upper side of the invisible line that the war 
 which they never thought of beginning, but at last 
 were driven to undertake, should be waged wholly 
 without reference to the question of Domesticus 
 Africanus, or the Institution. The Sisterhood was 
 to be saved from disruption and restored with 
 out change. The cancer-eaten body was to be 
 cured, without touching the cancer. The Ship of 
 State was to be got safely to Tarshish with Jonah 
 under the hatches. The Institution, which had 
 made all the mischief, was not to be meddled with. 
 The separating sisters were to be constrained at the 
 cannon s mouth, and pressed with the point of the 
 bayonet, to come back, just as they were, before 
 that fateful shot was fired. This was the wisdom of 
 the wisest who waged the war, and they undertook 
 to deal with Domesticus Africanus as if there were, 
 in reality, no war, and as if all the slaughter, on both 
 sides, were simply to settle the vexed question 
 whether or not the Sisterhood could be broken up, 
 at will, by any of the separate sisters. 
 
 Accordingly when, under cover of the hubbub of 
 the marching, and countermarching, and attack, and 
 invasion, Domesticus Africanus came straggling, 
 now and then, within the camp lines of the inva 
 ders, having got through his thick skull a faint 
 
6 4 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 notion that, in some way, he was concerned in the 
 fight, and that it might be better for him to steal away 
 from the encircling arms of the Institution than to 
 abide where he was, he was courteously sent back, 
 by the invaders, to his master or mistress, by order 
 of the wise men. But presently, there came to be 
 a foolishness wiser than this wisdom. If Domes- 
 ticus Africanus was property on the nether side of 
 the line, and if the invaders were waging a real war, 
 and were actual and not make believe belligerents, 
 and entitled by all the rules of war, to use and con 
 fiscate the property of the enemy, why was not Do- 
 mesticus Africanus, when found within the invaders 
 lines, lawful prize, as contraband of war ? He could 
 not be reclaimed by his former owner, under the 
 compact, because the compact was broken by the 
 owner and sought to be utterly destroyed, and as, 
 in the eyes of the invaders, the property was of a 
 description that belonged to itself, he came to a kind 
 of intermediate state, between being a thing and 
 being a person, and, for the time being, was labelled 
 " Domesticus Contrabandus." 
 
 It was at this precise point that our good Prince 
 was sorely puzzled and perplexed. In common 
 with a great many of his fellow princes of the Im 
 perial City, he had clung to the hope, first, that the 
 Sisterhood could be saved without a fight, and then, 
 that if a fight were inevitable, it could go on without 
 harming the Institution. He was well satisfied with 
 things as they were. He had lively sympathies with 
 Netherdom. A tenth cousin of his maternal grand- 
 
THE STRIFE OF THE SISTERHOOD. r 
 
 father, had at some remote period of time, settled 
 and married in that sunny clime, and had become a 
 participant in the benefits of the Institution. Such a 
 tie, however slender in fact, was of a wonderful 
 potency in sentiment and sympathy; and was sup 
 posed to create a kind of secret pledge and hypoth 
 ecation of the opinion and conscience of the most 
 distant collateral connections on the upper side of 
 the line, by way of security for the inviolability of 
 the Institution. The Prince had been often on the 
 nether side, and had been entertained there, as be 
 came his princely rank, returning home, after each 
 successive visit, with glowing accounts of what he 
 had seen and enjoyed. 
 
 Most of his experiences had been prior to his mar 
 riage, but many a heartache had he given the Little 
 Lady, all unconsciously, as he dilated upon the 
 liberal and patriarchal hospitalities of which his 
 memory retained a vivid impression, and to which 
 he was fond of recurring. There, Domesticus was 
 born and brought up in the bosom of the Family, 
 and was bound, by the sacred tie of property, to a 
 life-long, loyal service. The Institution, seen from 
 this bright side, was like a tree of life in the midst 
 of a garden. It made possible, in reality, what he 
 had only dreamed of, in vision, or read about in 
 romance. Houses wide open ; tables spread daily 
 and with lavish bounty, for troops of guests, ex 
 pected or unexpected; viands supplied from the 
 abundant resources at hand, requiring nothing 
 exotic to add to their excellence, and of which, in 
 5 
 
66 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 their wonderful preparation, the secrets were hered 
 itary and were part of the traditions of a family and 
 a race ; and all this ruled over with a kind of 
 paternal and feudal sway, by models of manly 
 daring and womanly grace, undisturbed by the fret 
 ting cares of petty routine, or by the wearisome 
 change and worrying friction of the life at home. 
 
 "After all," said the Princess, when the Prince 
 would pause, after one of his high-wrought descrip 
 tions, " no wonder they can be hospitable, when 
 they can command work without wages, and own 
 the people who do it. If we could buy and sell 
 Domesticus as we pleased, or raise him and grow 
 him, like corn and cabbages, we could be just as 
 hospitable, and entertain just as well, possibly 
 better, than they do. But what right have they got 
 to own Domesticus Africanus and make him do 
 their work for nothing?" 
 
 Then the Prince would explain to her that Do 
 mesticus Africanus was under a special, old time 
 curse and ban, which bound him, and his posterity, 
 to fetch and carry forever. Also, that the Institu 
 tion was a great blessing to him and his children, 
 because it provided them with homes, and food, and 
 raiment, and other necessaries of life, having which 
 they ought to be content. 
 
 "I can t see," said the Princess, "how you can 
 make out a thing to be a curse and a blessing at the 
 same time, or when it stops being a curse and be 
 gins being a blessing. The long and the short of 
 it is that they get the work and give no pay. A 
 
THE STRIFE OF THE SISTERHOOD. ty 
 
 great many of the emissaries of Domesticus, here 
 abouts, may be under a curse they act as if they 
 were plenty of them but nobody kidnaps them 
 and makes them work for nothing." 
 
 " What can these good people do ? " said the 
 Prince. " They have got Domesticus Africanus on 
 their hands and they must keep him." 
 
 " That doesn t hinder their paying him and letting 
 him feel that he is a man." 
 
 " He is paid, in food, and clothing, and care." 
 
 " So are dogs, and horses, and oxen, fed and cared 
 for, but is he not much better than they ?" 
 
 Then the Prince would explain that, in a certain 
 sense, he was, and, again, in a certain other sense, 
 he was not, and the Princess would urge that he 
 had a soul as well as a body, and press the point, 
 until the Prince would admit, with some qualifica 
 tions, that he had a soul, but of an altogether in 
 ferior, and so to speak, unmarketable quality and 
 grade, in fact, a damaged article, the whole race 
 bring a kind of job lot, very far below the average 
 social standard, and doomed to perpetual degrada 
 tion. 
 
 " Of course," she would say, indignantly, "if it 
 is to be perpetually degraded ; but it does seem to 
 me against nature, and against right, and against 
 conscience, for a man to claim to- own another man." 
 
 This always led the Prince to say, very solemnly, 
 that there were a great many excellent, wise and 
 superior men, who believed in the Institution and 
 its divine character, and that circumstances altered 
 
68 DOMESTIC US. 
 
 cases, in the matter of souls, and bodies, and races, 
 as well as in respect to other things, and that, on 
 the whole, Domesticus Africanus was far better off 
 as he was than if he were roaming about in his 
 native nakedness, with wild beasts, in jungles and 
 forests, and that the meddlesome Abolishers were 
 doing infinite mischief, by stirring up questions 
 which only made trouble, and that they were un 
 settling the foundations, and if the foundations were 
 destroyed what would become of the Merchant 
 Princes ? 
 
 This idea of danger to the foundations was a 
 source of constant alarm to the Prince and his 
 fellows, as it involved the undermining, to a very 
 large extent, of the whole system of Dry Goods, 
 and the possible loss of millions of uncounted 
 sestertia. War was the very last thing they wanted 
 and even when they found themselves enveloped 
 in its murky cloud, and saw its grim shape, stalking, 
 like a fiend, across their path, they were still con 
 sulting the oracles, and inspecting the omens and 
 crying "Peace, peace," until, in the midst of their 
 vociferations and expostulations, the whirlwind rose, 
 and the storm burst, and the lightnings flashed, and 
 the floods came, and the foundations were swept 
 away, and the Institution was hurled, as by an aveng 
 ing Almighty hand, into the blackness of darkness 
 forever. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 COMING AND GOING OF CONTRABANDUS. 
 
 IT was before this final and blessed consummation 
 had been reached, and while the good fight was 
 in its earlier stages, the Prince, in his wisdom, being 
 still sorely perplexed with the problem of how to 
 save the Sisterhood, without hurting the Institution, 
 and Domesticus Africanus, in his unwisdom, being 
 more sorely perplexed to comprehend his anomalous 
 predicament of being neither a thing nor a person, 
 but only a contraband of war, that a new and sur 
 prising piece of information was communicated to 
 the Little Lady. The Prince, one evening, with an 
 air of supreme self satisfaction, announced that the 
 home problem was about to receive a partial, if not 
 a perfect solution, in the person of Domesticus 
 Contrabandus, whom their household was to receive 
 on the morrow. 
 
 It had come about in this wise : Domesticus 
 Africanus, was, as far as his opportunities permitted, 
 on the move, in the invaded regions, towards the 
 pickets of the invaders. From all that was going 
 on below the invisible line, he appeared to be draw 
 ing the inference that he could become a person. 
 This inference was very often drawn with the aid of 
 
 69 
 
70 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 a horse and cart, which being the property of his 
 master or mistress, was, in the existing state of war, 
 equally contraband with himself, and forfeited to 
 the enemy by all the usages of contending powers. 
 So, in good conscience, and as an act of authorized 
 hostility, he would pile into the cart, under cover 
 of the night, all his contraband belongings, con 
 sisting of his wife, and children, or as many of them 
 as had not been sold away from him, and such other 
 movables as were within convenient reach, and de 
 part from the house of bondage, without stopping 
 to shake off the dust from his feet. The contra 
 bands, who thus flocked into the lines of the in 
 vaders, were set to doing camp drudgery, and many 
 of them were disposed of in such manner that they 
 could begin, at once, to try the experiment of being 
 persons, on their own account. 
 
 In the course of such dispositions, a brave war 
 rior, commanding in the ranks of the invaders, of 
 kin to our Prince, consigned to him the particular 
 specimen of the new genus Contrabandus, of whose 
 coming the Princess was apprised. It was a cheer 
 ing anticipation. She was given to understand that 
 she was now about to appreciate the blessings of the 
 Institution, without becoming a sharer in its crimes. 
 She would have the skilled and trained services of 
 Domesticus Africanus, with the privilege of paying 
 him, at the market rate, for the labor he performed. 
 She could teach him to read, and write, and cipher, 
 and think, and elevate him, as high as she pleased, 
 in the scale of humanity. The Prince was delighted 
 
COMING AND GOING OF CONTRA BAND US. j { 
 
 at this lucky stroke, in which philanthropy, political 
 economy, and social progress seemed to be happily 
 combined, and while the Princess was not without 
 some secret misgivings as to the result, she awaited, 
 with mingled hope and apprehension, the coming 
 of the Atlas who was to lift the load from her weary 
 shoulders. 
 
 The morrow came, and with it, came Contraban- 
 dus. Having achieved his personal freedom, he 
 considered himself equal to any possible emergency, 
 and took immediate possession of the palace, as if 
 coming into a patrimony of which he was the right 
 ful heir. Fresh from the din and stir of contending 
 armies, and the excitement of camp life, his general 
 demeanor was that of a belligerent, ready to lead, 
 or follow, in any forlorn hope. There was not a 
 ray of encouragement for the Princess in any of the 
 inky lines of his Ethiopic face, nor a redeeming 
 touch to its ugliness, save that at every parting of 
 the vastness of his lips he disclosed a set of ivories 
 which, in spite of her horror at the thought of own 
 ing a fellow being, in whole or in part, the Princess 
 wished she could buy and reduce to immediate pos 
 session. However, if she could, for a little season, 
 suspend her daily anxiety in regard to the depart 
 ment in which he was to exercise his supposed skill 
 and experience, she would become accustomed to 
 his unsightly aspect, and there was solid comfort in 
 his teeth. 
 
 The Prince, who believed with Macbeth that "the 
 sauce to meat is ceremony," deemed himself fortu- 
 
^ 2 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 nate in being able to signalize the inauguration of 
 the new era in his household administration by the 
 presence, at his board, of a select company, who 
 would be made doubly at their ease by the minis 
 trations of Contrabandus. He came home, a little 
 in advance of his expected guests, and as he entered 
 his palace, now in the safe custody of the newly in 
 stalled Major-domo, his sense of smell was saluted 
 by an all-pervading odor which he instantly asso 
 ciated with the means by which the houses of the 
 Imperial City were illuminated at night. It was in 
 the grand hall, on the staircase, and in full posses 
 sion of the mansion, though, as yet, unperceived by 
 the Princess, who was enveloped in the mysteries of 
 her toilette. The Prince raised the hue and cry, 
 customary with householders in such cases of escape, 
 but after long search, no unclosed outlet was dis 
 covered. 
 
 Suddenly, a suspicion crossed the mind of the 
 Prince. 
 
 " Where is Contrabandus ? " 
 
 He was found by the Prince, who on receiving 
 an intimation as to his probable whereabouts, went 
 in swift search of him, in the outer court, at the rear 
 of the palace, engaged in the act of dealing tremen 
 dous blows upon the side of a barrel which he was 
 vainly endeavoring to open by splitting it in the 
 centre, as if it were an immense section of a felled 
 tree. 
 
 " What are you about ? " asked the Prince. 
 
 " Performin on dish yer bar l " replied Contra- 
 
COMING AND GOING OF CONTKABANDUS. 73 
 
 bandus, resting from his labors and displaying his 
 ivories. 
 
 " Leave the barrel alone and answer me this ques 
 tion did you put out the light in the cellarium ? " 
 
 " Yes, massa, blowed her out clean had to blow 
 bustin hard, but blowed her out never performed 
 on a light like dat afore." 
 
 The Prince recalled a tradition that, when a 
 noted hero of the nether side of the line, a master 
 of the arts of eloquence, a leader of the Senate of 
 Magna Patria, and once a candidate for her highest 
 civic honor, made his first visit to the Imperial City, 
 he was reported to have nearly lost his life by 
 asphyxia, induced by his " performing," in the same 
 way, upon the aerial light in his apartment, while 
 spending the night in the mansion of a friend. Held 
 in check, by this memory, from seizing the hatchet 
 and decapitating Contrabandus on the spot, he good 
 naturedly conducted him to the subterranean place 
 of his offence, and gave him an object lesson in the 
 science of Illumination. 
 
 To complete this special course of instruction, 
 he then took him to the banqueting hall, to initiate 
 him, at once, into the higher branches of the art. 
 With his own princely hand he lighted the tiny 
 instrument of ignition, by a slight friction of its 
 inflammable point on the rough surface of the recep 
 tacle from which he took it, and then went through 
 the equally familiar process of illuminating, with its 
 aid, some of the light-diffusing jets, pendent over the 
 table, already decorated for the coming repast. Con- 
 
74 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 trabandus obeyed the injunction to follow the pro 
 cess at every advancing step, in order to its imme 
 diate imitation, testifying his admiration in a series 
 of exclamations, in a loud key, as if intended to at 
 tract the attention of distant spectators in the outer 
 air. 
 
 " Stop that shouting, Contrabandus," said the 
 Prince. " Now take the box and light that wall 
 bracket yourself." 
 
 Contrabandus seized, not only the proffered box, 
 but also the half consumed stump, which the Prince 
 still held in his hand, and with a frantic gesture, 
 described, with its sooty point, a long line of black, 
 across the pearl-tinted panel from which the bracket 
 projected. 
 
 " Reckon dish yer lucifer is w at you teched off 
 afore, Massa," said Contrabandus, reckless of the 
 damage he had done, but with genuine surprise at 
 the failure of his experiment, and its result in evok 
 ing darkness instead of light. 
 
 The Prince stood aghast. He surveyed Contra 
 bandus from head to foot. There were divisions of 
 labor on the lower side of the line, as well defined 
 and thoroughly regulated as in the realms of hired 
 service. To what had he been born and bred ? 
 
 " Contrabandus," said the Prince, in his most 
 princely tone, " have you ever waited at table ? " 
 
 " Reckon I has, Massa on forty to wunst O go 
 long bout waitin clar d de track dat time and 
 got de dishes in head of everybody." 
 
 This was literally true. Once in his life, and but 
 
COMING AND GOING OF CONTRABAXDUS. 75 
 
 once, had Contrabandus waited at table, and on 
 forty guests. It was at a barbecue, in a pine grove; 
 for Contrabandus was a field hand, and conversant 
 with cattle from his youth. 
 
 The Prince had to dress for dinner and he could 
 not linger. Heavy of heart, and with dire forebod 
 ings, he turned to leave the room, but tarried an 
 instant for a query too important to omit. 
 
 " Is the Falernian in the ice ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, Massa out of all dose yer long-necked 
 flagons. De Missus she told me to put it in ice 
 and Fse got it all out had to chop off de necks 
 reckon dey got twisted up somehow with wires 
 chopped em clean off wid de hatchet, and dey 
 kinder flew like, but cotched de most of it and no 
 glass in de tub." 
 
 " Tub ! " echoed the Prince in dismay. 
 
 " Yes, Massa, all out in one tub de teetotal 
 dozen and chunks of ice to boot all ready for 
 dippin out." 
 
 The Prince gave one long deep groan and van 
 ished. It was not that the whole case of extra dry 
 Falernian, which he had sent home for judicious 
 testing, by expert palates, had been sacked and ex 
 terminated by the rude hand of Contrabandus, in 
 stead of the proper preparation of a couple of flagons, 
 as he had specially directed, and as the Princess had 
 duly commanded ; it was the dire conviction of the 
 ignominious failure in which he was involved, that 
 made his disgust too deep for words. 
 
 He met the Little Lady descending the stair- 
 
7 6 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 case, but rushed past without a kiss, a word, or a 
 glance. 
 
 She knew, only too well, what was before her. 
 At an early hour in the day she had discovered that 
 Contrabandus, so far from being the solution of a 
 problem, was, on the contrary, himself as insoluble 
 a problem as she had ever encountered. He had 
 seated himself comfortably in an easy chair, in the 
 most attractive spot available for his selection, and 
 when she descended to make her daily round of in 
 spection, he was regaling himself with a pipe, and 
 recounting, to an interested group of listeners, gath 
 ered from the various departments of household ser 
 vice, temporarily abandoned, his varied perils by 
 field and flood, in the transition from bondage to 
 freedom. The Little Lady dispersed the audience, 
 confiscated the pipe, and ordered Contrabandus up 
 stairs, where, on a subsequent examination, his dense 
 ignorance and absolute barbaric awkwardness were 
 disclosed. Still, she had heard of the aptitude of 
 his race to receive instruction, and of the rapidity 
 with which he was supposed to be rushing into the 
 ranks of intellectual progress, at the call of philan 
 thropy, and she thought she would try her practiced 
 hand upon him in the sphere of duty to which he 
 had been summoned. And this she would do thor 
 oughly, for the Prince s sake, as well as for the good 
 of Contrabandus. 
 
 The cloth was thereupon spread and the table 
 set, under the Little Lady s immediate direction, 
 and, in the main, by her own hands ; she then 
 
COMING AND GOING OF CONTRAKA.\Dl S. 
 
 77 
 
 .seated herself at its head, and in dumb show, and 
 according to the guidance of her voice, and eye, and 
 gesture, caused Contrabandus to perform in her 
 presence. He was not only a willing, but a wildly 
 active scholar, evidently thinking it great fun and 
 engaging in the novel occupation as if it were a 
 new variety of field sport lie plunged to and fro, 
 thrusting before the Princess the empty tureen, dis 
 tributing plates of imaginary soup, whirling, in 
 mid-air, platters of supposititious fish, make-believe 
 meats, and other fictitious viands, through all the 
 courses of the meal, and making confusion worse 
 confounded with his inevitable and fatal blunders. 
 In vain did the Princess seek to make him revolve 
 about her in his proper orbit. Twenty times, during 
 this pantomimic rehearsal, was a scene like this 
 enacted. Enter Contrabandus, on full jump, with an 
 empty dish. Princess, with a deprecatory gesture, 
 waves him back. Contrabandus, in the effort to 
 stop, pitches forward. Princess shrieks, menacing 
 him with uplifted forefinger. Contrabandus disap 
 pears, and re-enters. Princess encourages him with 
 a beckoning motion of her hand. Contrabandus 
 ducks his head, gathers force for a rapid forward 
 movement, and projects the dish as if bent on bowl 
 ing down everything on the table. Princess, with 
 open palm, warns him off". Contrabandus misin 
 terprets the gesture as a signal for instant dispatch, 
 and delivers the dish on the middle of the table with 
 a bang which sets everything ringing. Princess, with 
 savage glance, threatens him with annihilation. Exit 
 
^8 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 Contrabandus, as if his old master were after him, 
 with a shot-gun and a brace of blood-hounds. 
 
 The pantomimic dinner bore no comparison in 
 its tragi-comic situations to the real dinner. Some 
 time before it was served, Contrabandus, who had 
 made discovery of a bell, the use of which was strictly 
 prohibited, except in cases of extreme emergency, 
 employed himself in ringing it for an indefinite 
 time which, to the agonized ears of the Prince 
 and Princess and the startled ears of their guests, 
 seemed much longer than it really was under the 
 apparent supposition that all the field hands were 
 to be got in. When the company were seated, 
 the Little Lady soon discovered that he had not 
 retained the first faint remembrance of the morning 
 lesson. Whatever instinct served him in stead of 
 memory, had taken him back to the barbecue and 
 the pine grove, and the semi-barbaric antics and 
 revelry of that festal scene. 
 
 How the earlier stages of the dinner were accom 
 plished, in the wild disorganization which reigned 
 supreme, under which the well trained, assisting 
 damsel succumbed, in helpless bewilderment, in a 
 corner of the neighboring pantry, and the Princess 
 kept her seat, only because she knew that in every 
 case of a runaway it was safer to sit still than to 
 jump out, neither host, hostess nor guests could 
 afterwards describe. The performances of Contra 
 bandus were like the cyclone, which does its de 
 structive work with a suddenness that so obliterates 
 the consciousness of those whom it buries alive 
 
COMING AXn (,OIXC, OF CONTRAHAXDUS. 79 
 
 under the crash of universal ruin, that when rescued 
 they cannot tell the tale, either of the shock or of 
 the succor. 
 
 The inevitable crisis came at last. Among the 
 oft-repeated injunctions of the Princess, at the morn 
 ing rehearsal, was one which instructed Contra- 
 bandus, at a certain stage of the dinner, and before 
 its final courses, to remove the ample napkin which 
 was invariably spread over the table cloth, in front 
 of the Prince, who was fond of carving, and preferred 
 the ancient order to the more recent fashion, which 
 threatens to make carving a lost art among gentle 
 folk. 
 
 When the point of time was reached at which this 
 mandate should have been executed, the Princess, in 
 a wild effort to bring some trace of order out of 
 chaos, whispered to Contraband us, as he shot past 
 her, the single word " napkin." He took up, on the 
 instant, a confused recollection of the reiterated com 
 mand of the morning. The word rang in his ear like 
 the note of a bugle, sounding a charge. The duty 
 of the moment came to him like a sudden inspira 
 tion. It was to capture the nearest napkin and 
 remove it out of sight. The guest at the post of 
 honor, at the right hand of the Princess, was at 
 once the object of a strategic movement on his left 
 flank. The snow-white napkin, which lay, in ample 
 folds, across his portly person, in the peaceful dis 
 charge of its inanimate, protective duty, was furtively 
 seized by Contrabandus, and snatched away. 
 
 Now there is nothing which a well-regulated and 
 
g DOMESTICUS. 
 
 veteran diner-out would be less likely to anticipate, 
 or more likely to resent, than an effort to deprive 
 him, of his napkin, by force, in the middle of a 
 dinner, and at the table of a friend. It is not to be 
 wondered at that the guest at the right hand of 
 the Princess, thus suddenly surprised and attacked, 
 by a natural impulse and by a counter movement, 
 in the nick of time, grasped the rapidly disappear 
 ing napkin, at the imminent risk of losing his 
 balance and getting, prematurely, under the table. 
 Contrabandus was checked in full career but only 
 checked and the struggle between the combatants 
 became most exciting. Each clinging, with convul 
 sive clutch, to the several ends of the napkin, its 
 broad, snowy band tightly drawn between them, 
 they looked like the famous Siamese Twins, save 
 that what resembled their bond of union, was, in 
 this instance, a sign of discord. Contrabandus, 
 loyal to his mistress, and burning with the zeal of a 
 new convert to free labor, was bent on " havin dish 
 yer towel, any how," while the victim of his assault, 
 being of heavy weight and somewhat combative in 
 disposition, was disposed to settle the question, at 
 once and forever, of the inalienable rights of a bona- 
 fide napkin holder. It was literally the tug of war. 
 But on which end of the napkin victory would 
 finally have perched, the Muse of History can 
 never sing, for the Prince, at the moment his eye 
 took in the unprecedented situation, with a voice of 
 thunder, demanded unconditional and instant sur 
 render on the part of Contrabandus, who was sum- 
 
COMIXC, AXD GOING OF CONTRABANDUS. 8l 
 
 marily banished from the banqueting hall in dis 
 grace, to wonder, in his exile, why he should have 
 been cashiered, on the eve of a brilliant success. 
 
 Order having been restored and the rights of 
 hospitality vindicated, the Prince told his guests the 
 whole story of Contrabandus, lucifers, Falernian 
 and all, and the Princess supplemented it by re 
 counting, and, in part, repeating the pantomimic 
 experiences of the Barmecide feast of the morning, 
 so that a merrier ending of a meal was hardly ever 
 known within the palace walls. 
 
 The next day, Contrabandus, having made the 
 timely discovery, " his own self," that the "perform 
 ances " on the upper side of the invisible line were 
 " teetotal ly contrairey to what day is " on the 
 nether side, was relieved from further indoor duty 
 and sent off, with well-lined pocket and good 
 credentials for open air service, to an interior and 
 strictly rural district, where there are no risks of 
 illumination ; where the juice of the apple, and not 
 the foaming grape of the Falemian vine is the 
 favorite beverage; and where napkins are, as yet, 
 unknown. 
 6 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 A MALADROIT PRINCE. 
 
 IT must, in all candor, be admitted that the Prince 
 was not as wise, or as considerate, in respect to 
 matters in which dealings with Domesticus were con 
 cerned, as he was, or was supposed to be, in the man 
 agement of his own external affairs. He chafed and 
 made himself uncomfortable over many things 
 which the Princess easily schooled herself to endure. 
 What specially exasperated him, and created un 
 ceasing irritation, which the lapse of time failed to 
 allay, were the poisoning propensities of Domes 
 ticus. 
 
 The historic poisoner, the poisoner of the drama 
 and of the romance, worked in secret and did 
 his deadly work by stealth, but the poisons of 
 Domesticus were dispensed in the light of day 
 and greedily consumed by innumerable victims, 
 with their eyes as well as their mouths wide open. 
 He poisoned at the fountain-head. His dealings 
 with the great staple of human sustenance, of 
 which the staff of life is fashioned, by subjecting 
 it to the action of chemical compounds, out of sheer 
 malice, and so contrived as to secure the corrosion 
 of all the stomachs of all the free and enlight- 
 82 
 
A MALADROIT l KL\ ( 7:. g^ 
 
 ened inhabitants of Magna Patria, was, with the 
 Prince, a constant source of wrath and objurgation. 
 It vexed his soul that the prayer for daily bread 
 should be answered in the mixtures of tartaric acid, 
 potassia, and chloride of sodium, which, under 
 various disguises and aliases, had come to be sub 
 stituted for the leaven of earlier and better days; all 
 in the interest of lie-a-bed and lazy emissaries of 
 Domestic us, who set aside the revered processes 
 of fermentation, and discarded the time-honored 
 yeast-cake, the delight of the old brigade of bread- 
 makers. 
 
 The presence, at the morning meal, of a well- 
 heaped pile of products of the oven, hastily com 
 pounded with the aid of the last patented prep 
 aration with which the evil genius of Chemistry had 
 cursed the finest of the wheat, was like a red rag 
 to a bull. The Prince had an aversion to being- 
 
 o 
 
 poisoned, and he carried it so far as to object to the 
 poisoning of his wife and children. These prepara 
 tions, he would declare, were poison, slow but sure. 
 All the toothless gums, all the sallow faces, all the 
 spoiled complexions, all the miserable dyspeptics, 
 throughout the length and breadth of Magna Patria, 
 were largely due to this diabolism, of which the 
 cream of Tartarus and the substance held in solution 
 by the Dead Sea were fitting elements and ingre 
 dients. 
 
 He waged war against the deadly and insidious 
 compounds, in all their forms; he denounced their 
 inventors, manufacturers, and venders, as enemies of 
 
8 4 
 
 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 the human race, no matter under cover of how many 
 copyrights, trade-marks, medals, or medical analyses, 
 they plied their pernicious arts. Time and again, 
 he prohibited the use of their wares and forbade 
 their introduction into the palace, but his interdicts 
 were all in vain ; Domesticus was the sworn ally of 
 these destroyers, who, while carrying on a perpetual, 
 internecine war against each other, were leagued, in 
 common cause, against the entire community, and 
 so the fatal mixtures, smuggled into every prohib 
 ited place, were thrust upon the Prince, in spite of 
 his teeth, and between his teeth. To no purpose 
 did he threaten, and proscribe, and issue his search 
 warrants. He was as powerless as an exciseman 
 on an Irish coast. The prohibited article could not 
 be found on any part of the premises, in cup, or can, 
 or parcel ; nobody ever bought it, or brought it, or 
 saw it, and yet there it was, in inexhaustible supply, 
 the bane of every breakfast, like the death in the 
 prophet s pot, with no miraculous healing touch of 
 Nature at hand, to counteract the malignant evil, 
 and supply its antidote. So, like Socrates when he 
 drank the hemlock, the Prince had to convey the 
 poison to his own lips, not with the serenity of Soc 
 rates, but with dire imprecations upon Domesticus, 
 who, all unseen, laughed in the sleeve in which the 
 death-drug had been slyly and secretly conveyed 
 into the palace. 
 
 The Princess thought it unreasonable that such 
 a fuss should be made over what seemed to her a 
 fixed result in the course of the progress of civil- 
 
A MALADROIT PRINCE. 85 
 
 ization, which was bringing science to the aid of the 
 culinary art as well as of all other arts. After all, 
 she would tell the Prince, when after unsuspect 
 ingly biting through a lump of the saline abom 
 ination he would break out into incipient impre 
 cations, it was a question of skill in the use ; gun 
 powder and dynamite might be awkwardly handled, 
 but they were no less valuable means to the ends 
 for which they were adapted. The Prince would 
 rejoin, with his teeth on edge, that the people who 
 were careless in handling these dangerous sub 
 stances generally had the evil effects visited sum 
 marily, and directly, upon themselves, while the 
 agents of Domesticus took good care to point their 
 destructive weapons away from their own persons. 
 
 The Prince, finding at last that he was wholly 
 powerless to carry his point, was forced to content 
 himself with making every one as uncomfortable as 
 he could, whenever the presence of the contraband 
 compounds was detected on the family board. He 
 talked about the " turnpike " which he insisted was 
 what his grandmother used for the raising of flour, 
 and which was something whereof the Little Lady 
 had never heard, although her education had been 
 sufficiently thorough for any well conditioned Prin 
 cess. 
 
 She thought it hard that he should expect the 
 old time and barbarous methods of his ancestors 
 to be perpetuated in modern palaces, and as for 
 his fancied " turnpike," whatever fermenting or 
 permeating mixture that may have been, she did 
 
86 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 not believe in its existence, and the word was in no 
 standard dictionary, with a definition justifying his 
 statement. Then the Prince would revert to the 
 scenes of his boyhood, and describe the long array 
 of turnpike cakes, carefully compounded, according 
 to the art and mystery of breadmakers, and being 
 the true leaven, ranged in due order, in the sunniest 
 exposure, to bring into service the direct solar rays 
 in aid of the perfect work they were to accomplish 
 the transformation of the brayed wheat into the 
 wheaten bread. 
 
 The Princess could easily discard these reminis 
 cences, as either too purely fanciful, or too wholly 
 irrelevant in view of their antiquity, and she had 
 too much good sense to attempt to turn back the 
 stream of Time in the interest of any particular 
 method of making biscuits. But while this subject 
 was disposed of without difficulty, there was 
 another, on which the Prince would frequently 
 dilate, which could not be so summarily dismissed. 
 This was the ancestral apple pie. The fondest 
 memories of the Prince for his grandmother seemed 
 to cluster around this pie. He was never tired of 
 talking about it, describing it, and instituting invidious 
 comparisons between itand the spurious article which 
 Domesticus insisted on palming off upon him, in 
 its stead. The genuine grandmother s apple pie 
 differed from the spurious apple pie of Domesticus, 
 in several cardinal points. In the first place, it had 
 apple in it. Secondly, there was no lemon in it. 
 Thirdly, it had no bottom crust. Fourthly, it was 
 
A MALADROIT PRINCE. gpr 
 
 not surmounted with any foreign or new-fangled 
 ornamentations, in lieu of the old-fashioned and 
 honest top crust. Fifthly, and lastly, one could eat 
 the whole of it and be never the worse. 
 
 Vainly had the Princess striven to have this ideal 
 apple pie reproduced. Domesticus grudged our 
 poor Prince any such souvenir of the Past as a solace 
 for the Present. Apple pie he could have, but only of 
 such sort as to awaken feelings kindred to those of 
 Tantalus, when the swift stream flowed past his lips 
 but just beyond their touch. Domesticus would 
 never give up the bottom crust. He held on to it as 
 if it were a kind of under-lying security for his wages. 
 He would never dispense with the lemon. It was, to 
 him, like the mixture of a lie, which, Lord Bacon 
 says, doth ever please. He clung to the top deco 
 ration as tenaciously as an elderly flirt to a false 
 front. As for increasing the quantity of apple, it 
 was an insult to suggest it. Nature made the 
 apple, but he was to make the pie, and his rule was 
 the minimum of apple to the maximum of paste, 
 so that the Little Lady, after many expostulations, 
 entreaties, and commands, and some unsuccessful 
 experimenting, had abandoned the effort to revive 
 for the Prince this lost delight of his youth. She 
 could not silence his regrets nor satisfy his wonder- 
 ings, why, when everything else that was antique 
 was being revived, the grandmother s apple pie 
 could not be included in the revival; and in her 
 despair, she was tempted to wish that the Prince 
 had never had any grandmother, until she came to 
 
88 DOMESTIC US. 
 
 reflect, that in such case, there would never have 
 been any Prince. 
 
 Besides these instances of maladroitness, the 
 Prince would, sometimes, so far forget himself as to 
 venture untimely allusions to the supposed superior 
 good fortune of other families, in their experience 
 with Domesticus. In such and such a palace of a 
 friendly prince there might be found the accredited 
 representatives of Domesticus, who had remained 
 under the roof for two or three consecutive decades; 
 who were happy and who diffused happiness. 
 There, the same familiar faces which had greeted 
 the Prince in his younger days, at the open portal, 
 still yielded him the accustomed welcome, now that 
 his visits were rarer, and a new generation had 
 intervened. Or, he would describe how at some 
 repast served upon an antique table, with carved, 
 claw-footed legs, spread with heir-looms in glass, 
 and china, and silver, there would hover about 
 the board some old ministering genius, dark and 
 polished as the table-top itself, and held in high 
 esteem as a relic of the ancient days to which all 
 these souvenirs belonged. 
 
 How these better fortunes came to their possessors 
 the Princess could not divine, but she was unable to 
 rid herself of a feeling that their contemplation was 
 a source of unavailing regret to the Prince. It 
 seemed, to her sensitive nature, a kind of treason 
 against the sovereignty of home, a sacrilege against 
 the household gods, for a pater-familias to acknowl 
 edge that anything, under a stranger s roof-tree, was 
 
A MALADROIT PKINCE. 89 
 
 superior to what he could find under his own. If 
 he were forced to the consciousness of inferiority 
 and tempted to its avowal, it was a condemnation of 
 the incapacity which permitted it, and which must 
 be repented of in sack-cloth and ashes. 
 
 The efforts of the Prince to disabuse her mind of 
 these wrong impressions were not apt to be success 
 ful. He was himself, not infrequently, in a state of 
 exasperation against Domesticus, induced not only 
 by his special devices, but by his general and con 
 tinuous violation of all the laws of trade. 
 
 To pay the highest price for the best service, 
 to give the most for skilled labor, was right and 
 well enough, but to pay these prices and to get, 
 in return, the poorest service, and the densest 
 ignorance, was to be made the victim of intol 
 erable imposition. When the carefully selected joint 
 appeared before the Prince, in a state of readiness 
 for the plate and the palate, only a little advanced 
 beyond that in which it had been sold in the 
 shambles, and a whole company must needs wait, 
 with unappeased appetite, until it had been gashed 
 into bits and sent below stairs, to undergo a sup 
 plementary culinary process, to fit it for mastication, 
 there were no limits to the punishments he would 
 devise against the perpetrator of such a crime. It 
 was fraud and falsehood for any one to make 
 pretensions which resulted in such flagrant fail 
 ure. It involved deliberate deception and dis 
 honesty, because it was proof positive that all the 
 declarations and representations of capacity were 
 
QO DOMESTICUS. 
 
 false. In any other department of dealings, be 
 tween man and man, such crimes would send the 
 criminal to the penitentiary and the State-prison ; 
 but in the case of Domesticus he must be paid and 
 pampered while he went on, spoiling the supplies, 
 abusing the property, and destroying the digestion 
 and the temper of his employer. It was not a mat 
 ter, the Prince would say, of fifteen pounds of beef, 
 ruined by being sent up half raw, or another fifteen 
 pounds, equally ruined, by being cooked to a crisp. 
 It was a matter of principle. It struck at the 
 foundations of Society. It concerned the great law 
 of supply and demand, and of the relations between 
 capital and labor, and if Domesticus were to be 
 exempt from all obligations legal, social, and 
 moral communism and nihilism, and every other 
 baneful, destructive, and accursed ism, abroad in a 
 wicked world, would be let loose, and universal 
 anarchy was only a question of time. 
 
 The Princess, who was selfish enough to be less im 
 mediately concerned about the foundations of society 
 than about the harmony of her household, and the 
 happiness of her Prince, was too ready to take all 
 these vehement tirades as, in some sense, a reflec 
 tion upon her internal administration. 
 
 Then the Prince would emphatically declare that 
 it was not the Little Lady who was in fault, nor 
 her co-sufferers and fellow victims. He would 
 insist that the fact that nothing had happened to her 
 which did not come to all of her sex and station, 
 was proof of his contention, and that the exceptional 
 
A MALADROIT PRINCE. g\ 
 
 cases of success or exemption, which he sometimes 
 cited, only served to make good the general rule. 
 But she invariably found that the sole result of these 
 periodical outbursts was to put upon her the burden 
 and responsibility of a summary dismissal of the 
 delinquents who excited them, and the procurement 
 and substitution of their successors. 
 
 It would have been well for the Prince if he had 
 confined himself to occasional denunciations of 
 Domesticus, but, in spite of the repeated warnings 
 he had received, in his failures already recounted, 
 he would persist in forcing upon the Princess sug 
 gestions which were wholly impracticable, and which, 
 instead of alleviating her distresses, only aggravated 
 them. One of these, and, perhaps, the most ill 
 advised and unpalatable, was the periodical proposi 
 tion of a housekeeper. The Princess Otiosa had a 
 housekeeper and everything went on like clock 
 work, in her palace. In the great ancestral realm 
 of Mater Patria the housekeeper was a permanent 
 institution. Domesticus himself was subject, and 
 had been, from time immemorial, to her delegated 
 authority. There, the flowerets of the family were 
 potted and trained in the plantarium for such tender 
 shoots, tended by the nursery governess, and the 
 general routine of the household was in the hands 
 of the housekeeper, so that the mistress of the man 
 sion was not tied down to the details and drudgery 
 which beset her here. Why not copy the good 
 ways of the mother country ? 
 
 Such suggestions as these would bring every 
 
Q 2 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 drop of maternal and patriotic blood in the veins of 
 the Little Lady to the boiling point. She would 
 have none of the ways of Mater Patria. If she 
 could not rule her own house, she did not want a 
 roof to her head. A housekeeper, forsooth as if, 
 with all her cares, and anxieties, and toils, this new 
 and greater burden were to be imposed on her, and 
 she to be set aside, as unfit to manage her own 
 palace, and be put on the retired list, and told to 
 twirl her thumbs and do nothing ! 
 
 And to tear the dear children from her, and put 
 sticks in the plantarium for the little tendrils of 
 their hearts to twine about, instead of the maternal 
 stock, with its native roots and its encircling 
 branches! It was all well enough in Mater Patria, 
 where everything ran in grooves, cut centuries ago, 
 which it was a part of national pride and duty to 
 keep, forever, at the same depth, and width, and dis 
 tance, and divergence. Over there, housekeepers 
 and nursery governesses might fill places in the 
 household, as permanent as maids of honor in the 
 royal court But not here, where every right-minded 
 woman wants to know what is going on in her 
 house, and not be kept in the dark by intermediates 
 between her, and her children, and her servants. 
 And as for the Princess Otiosa, what could the 
 Prince, or any other man, know about the real state 
 of the case? Had she not, herself, admitted, at 
 countless afternoon teas and in all social circles, that 
 her housekeeper was a nuisance, and was not the 
 Princess Blandiloqua fairly driven out of her palace 
 
,/ MALADROIT PRINCE. 93 
 
 by the nursery governess, who cam j between her 
 and her husband, and how could any well-regulated 
 prince look his princess in the face and propose such 
 subversive and humiliating changes ? 
 
 The Prince was always glad to beat a retreat from 
 this particular line, although never wise enough to 
 abstain entirely, as he ought to have done, from ex 
 cursions into the dangerous sphere of discussion 
 into which the doings of Domesticus invited. In 
 fact, it was, sometimes, impossible to avoid being 
 insensibly drawn thither, as into an ambuscade, 
 because of the innumerable occasions in which the 
 last trial to which the Princess had been subjected, 
 or the latest disturbance of his own peace and com 
 fort, or the recital of new enormities practiced on 
 some relative or friend, was the topic of the hour. 
 From the particular instance, the Prince would, natur 
 ally, diverge to the general subject, and presently 
 would become entangled in the whole vast, intricate. 
 
 o 
 
 and inextricable theme of Domesticus. The Prince 
 had a large stock of unsettled views on this topic, 
 but as they had never been subjected to any prac 
 tical test, the Princess gradually found that they 
 were valuable only in theory, and that Domesticus 
 was a problem she must solve by herself. 
 
 And she was nearer its solution than she knew. 
 She had, during the long years of her probation, 
 from which we have drawn only a few scattered 
 incidents, been bringing to the study of Domesti 
 cus, in all his ways and in every department of 
 
94 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 his shiftless doings, the kind of minute scrutiny and 
 microscopic observation which Darwin gave to the 
 manoeuvres and mound building of those real 
 workers, the ants in his garden ; and she had come 
 to know and understand the subject of her study, 
 just as the great naturalist knew the omni-meander- 
 ing and ravaging insects, in all their devious ins 
 and outs. Compared with her certain knowledge 
 of facts and her accumulated store of experience, 
 of what value were the speculations of the Prince? 
 The Little Lady could not reason, or draw 
 deductions, or construct a syllogism, but she knew 
 all that any one could know about Domesticus, and 
 for her to hear the Prince discourse on this subject 
 was as if an old mariner, who had sailed all the seas, 
 without ever being taught the science of naviga 
 tion, were to be instructed in seamanship by a col 
 lege sophomore or a student of theology. What 
 she wanted was not dissertations on the relation 
 between employer and the employed, or on the sup 
 posed short comings of mistresses as the cause 
 whereof the delinquencies of maids were the effect, 
 but sympathy, and forbearance, and a tender sense 
 of the hard conditions by which the symmetry of 
 her home life, so precious in her sight, and so 
 sacredly guarded by her care, was, in spite of all 
 her efforts, being constantly chipped, at its delicate 
 edge, by the rasping contact with Domesticus. She 
 gave less and less heed to the generalizations of the 
 Prince, and as these sounded, more and more, like 
 empty verbiage, so did his particular instances of 
 
MALADROIT PRINCE. 
 
 95 
 
 better conditions elsewhere, real or imaginary, be 
 come less and less disturbing. 
 
 All unconsciously, she was coming towards the 
 possession, in her own right, of whatever clue 
 there may be in this tangled labyrinth. It was 
 with her as it is with so many of her sex. The 
 road to truth did not lie over the great cause 
 ways and viaducts of reason, constructed by skilled 
 hands and by scientific methods, but by a native 
 right of way, through instinct, sensibility, and the 
 heart. Thus helped, when seemingly most help 
 less, she had, like a pioneer in the unexplored 
 forest, blazed her own path in the wilderness thickets 
 into which Domesticus had driven her, and she was 
 beginning to know her way. In the treacherous 
 pitfalls, she was planting some sure stepping-stones. 
 She could not explain to others, or formulate for 
 herself, the results she had attained, or even fully 
 trust the strength they gave, but she knew she was 
 stronger, and she believed she was going towards 
 the light. 
 
 The strong foundation of her quiet confidence, 
 although she knew it not, was her abiding, native 
 sense of justice. This is the true rock on which 
 all human relations must subsist. It is like the 
 great stones on which the Temple stood. She 
 had come to feel, rather than to know how largely 
 this great primal law was set at nought in the deal 
 ings of Domesticus, who himself knew no law, and 
 taught his followers none, save the law of self 
 defence and the law of retaliation. 
 
9 6 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 Now what we call justice is, in human affairs, 
 simply, generosity in its highest action. Were the 
 true, generic stamp of human nature undefaced, no 
 native, and because native, no generous act would 
 ever meet a base return, but only its just equiva 
 lent, in reciprocal acts of kindliness and service, and 
 justice would be the all-pervading rule of life. In 
 spite of our degeneracy, which turns justice into 
 a lawgiver and an avenger, and which puts and 
 keeps the race, of necessity, under her behest, or 
 her ban, there are some fine natures, in which the 
 love of justice, for its own sake, shines in something 
 of its original brightness, set in crystalline beauty, 
 in the central adamant of the soul. Our Little 
 Lady was the unconscious possessor of this rare 
 treasure, and it was the talisman whose use and 
 power she was, by degrees and only imperfectly, 
 learning. 
 
 Her knowledge came only by long discipline. 
 She had found that to understand and to rule Do- 
 mesticus, she must, herself, be capable of doing his 
 work. Only thus could she stand on a vantage 
 ground of absolute justice in her dealings with him. 
 To exact honesty and integrity in the doing of his 
 work, and success in its results, might be impossible, 
 but a great step toward these ends was gained 
 when she showed the shirking, or recreant non- 
 worker that the thing she required could not only 
 be done well, and according to her standard, but 
 that she could do it herself. Not only had her fair, 
 jewelled finger been pointed to every nook and cor- 
 
./ MALADROIT / AY.VcV-:. 
 
 97 
 
 nor, from which the scouring sand or the cleansing 
 brush hud b.-en wickedly or surreptitiously withheld, 
 or from which the uplifted duster had been furtively 
 withdrawn; she had herself draped, from long- 
 closcd clipboard^ and from tuck-holes abominated 
 by the true housewife their slatternly accumula 
 tions. She would go on her knees, if occasion re 
 quired, for the instant completeness of the work, as 
 readily upon a hearth stone or the hall floor, as 
 upon a hassock in the proudest shrine. 
 
 Many things which Domesticus pretended to do 
 and was paid for doing, and never did, she not only 
 did, with uiKTring skill, but taught the way of doing, 
 though well knowing it was labor perhaps lost so 
 far as h T own personal advantage was concerned. 
 The fine yellow m al of Magna 1 atria, its best gold- 
 dust, she could coin into rare products most satisfy 
 ing to sense and tastj, while in the heavy, untrained 
 hand of Domesticus it was invariably spoiled, and 
 wasted, and condemned, as better fitted for the hen 
 coop than the breakfast table. She could turn aside 
 from the tender ministries of the sick room, to take 
 into her own fair hand the viand with which she 
 hoped to tempt the appetite of the convalescent, or 
 the invalid, hold it, with dextrous manipulation, over 
 the glowing coals of the quick fire, lighted under 
 her own eye, for the exact time required to bring it 
 to perfection, and then serve it, herself, at the instant, 
 so that its flavor seemed a new revelation to its re 
 cipient. 
 
 Like the Roman conquerors, she learned from 
 7 
 
9 8 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 her enemies. Wherever a device or a method, 
 known, or half known, to Domesticus, had in it the 
 possibility of improvement, she made it subservient 
 to her skill and her quick sense of observation, until, 
 little by little, without descending from her proper 
 sphere, she knew and was certain, that in every 
 department of the daily service she could, if it were 
 necessary, herself surpass her servitors. And yet 
 there were some things which seemed impossible 
 and beyond her reach, and one of these was the 
 grandmother s apple-pie. But even of this she did 
 not despair, for hope was of the essence of her sun 
 lit soul. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 JUVENTUS. 
 
 THE Imperial City was full of seekers after For 
 tune. Like the Virgins in the Scriptures, some 
 of them were wise and some of them were foolish. 
 Among the wise, few were wiser than Juventus. 
 From the Northern forest-clearing whence he came, 
 from the rushing, never-failing streams, into whose 
 depths he had cast his line, long before he threw it 
 into the troubled metropolitan waters, from the 
 bleak rock-ribbed uplands where he had braved 
 the winter winds, before he came to buffet with the 
 storms of fate, he brought with him, as his whole 
 patrimony, three priceless gifts, strength, courage, 
 and poverty. 
 
 The sages of his tribe, after their simple fashion, 
 had taught him out of their wisdom which came 
 from close contact, day and night, winter and sum 
 mer, with the earth and the air. Like the sorcerers 
 who could tame wild horses with whispered words 
 and charm away witches with rosemary, they had 
 their own secret spells by which Nature was made 
 subservient to the human will. They never wan 
 dered out of sight of the smoke wreaths of their 
 cabins, but their touch could turn the tall, forest 
 
 99 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 pine into the shapely mast and send it forth, no 
 longer to sigh and murmur in the midnight wind, 
 but bending under the weight of outspread sails, 
 to rise, and dip, and plunge, through calm and storm, 
 from ocean to ocean, till its path had girdled the 
 Slobe They sent Juventus forth, to make his own 
 way where all ways met. They bade him be brave 
 and wary, staunch of will and strong of purpose; 
 to add to his courage, constancy, and to constancy, 
 vigilance, and to vigilance, untiring toil. 
 
 As the Roman youths found their way to Athens, 
 he went to sit at the feet of the philosophers in the 
 schools, where he was taught in the wisdom of the 
 ancients and the moderns, and where, by dint of 
 some native genius and much severe discipline, he 
 came to see his name written with honor on the 
 Academic roll, and to become foremost as an athlete 
 on the Campus, as well as in the contests for scho 
 lastic prizes. 
 
 Thus equipped, Juventus was cast into the whirl 
 pool of the Imperial City, to swim for himself, 
 was a stranger among strangers, facing his unknown 
 future with a bright open countenance, a modest 
 resoluteness, and an honest readiness to do, with his 
 might whatsoever his hand found to do. 
 knocked at many doors, to find them shut and 
 barred until it seemed as if there were no vacant 
 space or chink, or crevice, in all the world of 
 working forces by which he was at once encom 
 passed and excluded. 
 
 He consulted the oracles. 
 
JUVENTUS.. 10I 
 
 At first their responses seemed to him dubious 
 and discouraging, but, after long waiting and much 
 pondering, he began to discern the possible meaning 
 of their utterances, and at last, in his own experi 
 ence, he found the best interpretation. 
 
 To his question, " Where is the way to success?" 
 the answer " Find the royal road and it will lead 
 thither," seemed to him to contradict what he had 
 always been taught, that there was no such royal 
 n>ad. Later, he learned that for every sovereign 
 will, crowned with a true purpose, there is a king s 
 highway thrown up, which surely leads, if not to 
 the loftiest summits of success, to its high vantage 
 grounds. 
 
 To his question, "When shall I succeed?" the 
 answer " When good luck comes," seemed to 
 him strangely at variance with the oft-repeated say 
 ing that luck is the refuge of fools. But, by and 
 by, he came to comprehend that good luck means 
 only opportunity, waited for, watched for, seized at 
 sight, and held with firm grasp. 
 
 To his question, " What is the secret of success?" 
 the answer, in a single word, " Dependence," 
 seemed a poor substitute, almost a mockery, for the 
 braver sound " Independence," which he had waited 
 to hear. But, after a while, he was schooled to 
 discern the truth that his is the highest success who, 
 in service, in rule, or in heroic action, exhibits not 
 so much his own independence of his fellows, as 
 their constant need of him and their dependence 
 upon him. To be the earliest to take up the daily 
 
2 **j 
 102 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 task, however humble ; the last to quit the post of 
 duty, however obscure ; to be the quickest of eye, 
 the readiest of hand, the fleetest of foot ; the most 
 sagacious to perceive, the most skillful to plan, the 
 most diligent to execute; the most faithful in trust 
 and the most fearless for the right, means, for every 
 such servitor, in whatever sphere, final mastery and 
 supremacy. He is the most successful of all men 
 who can best bear the heaviest weight of human 
 interests, and so best serve his kind. 
 
 Juventus, fortunately, had learned how to be 
 patient and how to wait. His special study and 
 training had been in the all-embracing science 
 which, from its rudimental stage of star-gazing, has 
 come to deal with whatsoever things can be meas 
 ured, or numbered, or computed, or set in relation 
 to other things and to the universe, and which, 
 being the foundation of all most effective mechanical 
 skill, as well as of all high processes of reasoning, 
 had furnished him for the best service of hand and 
 brain, and given him a training which helped him to 
 wait without idleness, and to hope without impa 
 tience. 
 
 At last, he succeeded, after many fruitless at 
 tempts, and as many disappointments, in finding his 
 way into the inner workshop of a wizard, ^enowned 
 for his dealing with hidden forces and his marvelous 
 inventive skill in bringing them, by curious appli 
 ances, contrived and wrought out of his special 
 arcana, into the daily service of mortals. More 
 skillful than Boethius, who is said to have made 
 
JUVENTUS. I03 
 
 singing birds out of brass, he could, as he showed 
 at a later stage of his inventions, bring the articu 
 lations of human speech out of inanimate mate 
 rials, and even at this earlier period he was giving 
 rare indications of his weird control over invisible 
 elements and powers. 
 
 He was busied, when Juventus entered, working 
 with his own hands, and absorbed in an experiment, 
 having for its object the ascertainment of the exact 
 relative proportions in which certain liquids should 
 be mixed in water to produce a chemical compound, 
 the properties of which he wished to avail of in the 
 operation of one of his machines. To this end he 
 was patiently filling vessels of varying size and 
 capacity, and pouring from one to another, with 
 steady hand and keenly observant eye. He did not 
 pause an instant on the entrance of Juventus, but, 
 by his manner, seemed to permit his presence as no 
 intrusion or disturbance, recognizing in the new 
 comer, from the account given him by the friend 
 who had secured his admission, a novice in the 
 occult arts in which he was, himself, so renowned a 
 master. But as his mastery was by self-taught 
 methods which ignored, and held somewhat in 
 disdain, the teachings of the schools, he looked 
 without special interest on this scion of the Acad 
 emy. 
 
 Juventus stood, for some time, a silent and inter 
 ested observer of the wizard s work. Presently, 
 when it seemed as if another hand might, oppor 
 tunely, aid its progress, he quietly stepped forward 
 
I04 DOME STIC US. 
 
 and gave his help, so deftly, and with such intel 
 ligent appreciation of the character of the experi 
 ment, that his service was accepted, without rebuff, 
 and presently, the two men were working together, 
 in dead silence and dead earnest, until, at length, 
 the slow process of measuring the liquids and of 
 arriving at the desired result was successfully con 
 cluded. 
 
 Then Juventus, who had by this time grasped the 
 whole scope of the inventor s experiment, which 
 was a matter of simple chemistry, took from the 
 rude table in the work-room a scrap of paper, and 
 by a rapid marshalling of figures and signs, and a 
 brief calculation, reached and set in plain terms, 
 amounting to absolute demonstration, the same 
 result as to the required relative proportions of the 
 chemicals which had made necessary for its ascer 
 tainment, by actual manipulation and measurement, 
 the labor of hours. He modestly placed the paper 
 before the wizard, who looked at the figures and 
 nodded assent at the result, but shook his head, 
 scornfully, at the process by which it was reached. 
 
 " My way is best for me, because it is my 
 own, and your calculation only proves that I was 
 right, of which I needed no proof. Book-men are 
 apt to become mere machines themselves, instead 
 of machine makers. I will have none of their 
 ways. But there may be work for you in the outer 
 shop, and I see you know how to use hand as well 
 as head. You can try," and, opening the door 
 leading into the loft which served as a shop, and 
 
JUVENTUS. I0 5 
 
 shoving Juventus forth, he made a sign and whis 
 pered a word to a workman in charge, the result 
 of \vhich was that a day s mechanical work for a 
 clay s wages was offered, and was forthwith availed 
 of, by our fortune seeker. 
 
 The thing which Juventus was set to do was the 
 putting together of the related parts of a new and 
 delicate instrument, a pet offspring of the wizard s 
 inventive brain, by which men were to be enabled 
 to multiply the transmission of messages over great 
 distances, magically conveyed, by methods whereof 
 he knew the charm and secret. Juventus willingly 
 applied himself to this humble task, and resumed it 
 on the next day, having been duly enrolled on the 
 staff of workmen in the factory. During the morn 
 ing, after putting together and adjusting with pre 
 cision and accuracy the separate and delicate parts 
 of the mechanism to his own satisfaction, it happened 
 that at the moment of completion, he was told to 
 take it into the inner work-shop, where the wizard 
 had just called for a finished instrument. Placing 
 it on the table, and receiving a nod of recognition 
 from the wizard, Juventus said : 
 
 " May I venture a word about this piece of 
 work ? " 
 
 " Say on," said the wizard. 
 
 " Here," said Juventus, placing his finger upon 
 the instrument, " is a superfluous screw. It can 
 easily be dispensed with. Bring these two an 
 eighth of an inch nearer each other and " 
 
 " You are right, entirely right," said the wizard, 
 
I0 5 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 interrupting him, his quick gesture showing that his 
 eye took in the whole suggested change, at once, 
 and that no further word was needed. " That will 
 save a day s work on every instrument. When you 
 come to-morrow, do not stay out yonder. I want 
 you here." 
 
 And so good luck came to Juventus. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A GRANDMOTHER S APPLE-PIE. 
 
 ONE bright morning the Prince was about leav 
 ing his palace for his daily round of duty, 
 when, as he kissed the Little Lady, with accus 
 tomed tenderness, he asked her, as was also his 
 wont, what he should send home ? 
 
 " We had chops and sweet-breads yesterday," 
 she murmured, returning his embrace. 
 
 This statement, as a reminiscence, might be sup 
 posed to have some possible interest, but, as it 
 threw no light on the subject of his inquiry, the 
 Prince persevered. 
 
 " What shall it be, dearest, I am in something of 
 a hurry." 
 
 " O dear," said the Princess, " why cannot we 
 live without eating? Send anything you please, 
 there is nothing now, except beef, and mutton, and 
 poultry." 
 
 "A piece of beef to roast?" said the Prince. This 
 was an original suggestion which he was in the 
 habit of making, almost every morning, under the 
 same circumstances. 
 
 " No," said the Princess, " you will want that to 
 morrow." 
 
 107 
 
! O g D OMES TIC US. 
 
 " Chickens?" said the Prince. 
 
 " Oh, she spoils potiltry." 
 
 " She spoils everything," said the Prince, getting 
 a little out of patience. 
 
 "Well, what am I to do? She is the tenth since 
 Christmas, and they are all alike." 
 
 " Break up housekeeping," said the Prince, in a 
 determined tone of voice, " rent the palace, and go 
 to the Via Quinta Hotel." 
 
 " What, take these dear, precious children to a 
 place where they would never have a morsel of 
 plain, wholesome food, and have to associate with 
 people you know nothing about, and deprive them 
 of a home ; I would starve first ! " 
 
 And the Princess sat down on the nearest settle, 
 in a way that made the Prince tremble. 
 
 " Of course," said he, " home is better for the 
 children, and for all of us only I am afraid Domes- 
 ticus is going to be the death of you." 
 
 " Perhaps he will be," said the Princess, dismally, 
 giving way, for the moment, to foreboding, "and if 
 I could only be sure that my darling children would 
 be properly cared for, I should die happy, but the 
 thought of a step-mother " 
 
 " Oh, don t speak to me so," cried the Prince, 
 frightened out of his wits, and as he clasped the 
 Princess in his arms, and she gradually grew recon 
 ciled to the prospect of continued life, she whis 
 pered in his ear he looking furtively at his watch, 
 meanwhile 
 
 " I suppose it had better be porter-house steaks." 
 
A GRANDMOTHER S APPLE-PIE. lO g 
 
 And porter-house steaks it was. 
 
 Hardly had the great door closed on her departing 
 spouse, before the Little Lady became thoroughly 
 ashamed of the momentary weakness to which she 
 had given way. She knew very well, that however 
 feebler vessels of her sex might succumb, and fly 
 to foreign parts, or to hotels, or lodgings, she 
 had no more intention or fear of being done to 
 death by Domesticus, than she had of being divorced 
 from her husband. She knew she was getting the 
 better of Domesticus every day and that his com 
 plete conquest was only a question of time. She 
 betook herself to her arm chair, and as she curled 
 herself in its encircling and comforting embrace, 
 regretted, more and more, that she had shown the 
 white feather, even for a moment ; yet she excused 
 herself, partly, as she might well have done wholly, 
 in the retrospect of some sharp trials, recent and 
 remote, which had jarred her nerves, and tried her 
 temper, and left her almost at her wits end, all 
 unknown to the Prince, or to any one else. 
 
 Then she revolved in her mind many things which 
 brought to her, gradually, a sense of relief and sat 
 isfaction. She was no longer in the dark, or in 
 doubt, about Domesticus. She saw clearly, and 
 knew thoroughly, all that was needed to be seen or 
 known, and she could be just to him and to her 
 self. After charging to his long, dark, unsettled 
 account, all his sins of omission and commission, 
 all his high crimes and misdemeanors, as well as 
 his inferior and innumerable pecadilloes, was he, 
 
JIO 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 after all, as black as he was painted, or as she had 
 often pictured him during her long, bitter warfare ? 
 Could she not give Domesticus his due, while exact 
 ing to the uttermost, what was due from him to 
 herself? If ignorance was inwrought in every fibre 
 of his constitution, was not ignorance the normal 
 state of every untaught being ? If idleness was 
 the breath of his nostrils, was it not the natural 
 corrosive of all human energy, uninspired and un- 
 impelled by adequate motive ? If ingratitude was 
 his constant requital for kindness, was not this base 
 alloy common to all unrefined natures ? If insub 
 ordination was his besetting sin, was it not the 
 primal vice of the whole brotherhood of man ? 
 After all, if the many nations of the earth are of 
 one blood, were they not all marred by the same 
 blow ? Of what avail the charity that suffereth 
 long, if it cannot suffer the manners and the want 
 of manners, the short comings and the long wan 
 derings of Domesticus, and learn to put up patiently 
 with him, as with so many other evils, real or fan 
 cied? 
 
 The Little Lady, as she pursued her mental re 
 trospect, in this spirit, found herself readily conced 
 ing, that with the exception of the dishonesty of 
 the thieving Hebe, the pang of which no time could 
 efface, and of occasional invasions of the minor 
 rights of property, less criminal than careless, the 
 whole uninventoried possessions of the Prince and 
 herself, and of her children and guests, in all the 
 height and length and breadth of the palace, had 
 
A GRAND MO THER S A PPL E- PIE. T l j 
 
 been safe, through many revolving years, in the 
 care and custody of Domesticus. And how much 
 real service had been the result of his daily and 
 nightly toil, even when over-rewarded, or grudg 
 ingly rendered, or only in part performed, and with 
 a blundering hand ? Judged by the test and meas 
 ure of temptation resisted, and evil example and 
 influence withstood, was not virtue, pre-eminently, 
 the rule with his many emissaries, and vice the 
 exception ? Taken as a class, she asked herself, 
 where, in all the history of communities, could be 
 found a fairer record of unstained character than 
 among the myriad workers, of the weaker sex, in 
 the households, high and low, of the Imperial City ? 
 These things, and many other things, the Little 
 Lady meditated, as she sat in her great easy chair, 
 with her invisible thinking-cap on her head, her 
 hands folded, her eyes half shut, and her face, not 
 clouded, but only shadowed, with grave thoughts 
 which followed one another in quick succession, as 
 light clouds drift athwart the summer sky. She 
 had learned so much and gained so much by her 
 long experience, that the self-confidence and reso 
 lution she now felt established within her, she knew 
 were genuine, her own possessions, not borrowed 
 or picked up, or won by chance, but gained by her 
 own unaided toil and skill, and therefore hers by 
 absolute right And to these elements was added 
 the ability to use them, so that, by degrees, she 
 came to the clear comprehension of the truth that 
 real mastery is not by plans or contrivances, how- 
 
II2 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 ever ingenious, for making over the world, but by 
 simply acting so as to make the most and the best 
 of it as it is. 
 
 " That which is crooked cannot be made straight," 
 said the Little Lady to herself, " and if Domesticus, 
 like so many other things, and so many other per 
 sons, is irretrievably crooked, why should I wonder 
 that he does not make himself straight, and become, 
 all at once what everybody is blaming him for not 
 being absolutely perfect." 
 
 At the end of her meditations, being now in a 
 glow and fervor of self-reliance, beyond any she had 
 ever felt before, the Princess rose and girded herself 
 with a clean and wide linen apron, and laid aside all 
 her rings, save only her wedding ring, and said fur 
 ther to herself, " I must do penance for my fault of 
 this morning. I will try once more to make a 
 grandmother s apple-pie and this time I mean to 
 succeed." 
 
 This high resolve was put into immediate execu 
 tion. 
 
 She was greatly aided in its accomplishment by 
 a timely gift, made to the Prince, by a friend, in a 
 rural district, of a barrel of the required fruit of the 
 sole description worthy, in the estimation of the 
 Prince, of being devoted to so high a use. Of all 
 the varied products with which Pomona, goddess of 
 fruits, enriches the soil of Magna Patria, none so 
 full of virtue as that type of rounded perfectness 
 which gives its name to the very centre of the organ 
 by which the soul looks out on Nature. Of all the 
 
.v .irn.E- / //:. \ ^ 
 
 many varieties of this first of fruits, the Prince 
 maintained that none could compare for all the 
 purposes of the culinary art with one choice kind 
 which, in his boyhood, he had gathered in the up 
 land, ancestral orchard, the apple of the pointed hill 
 top, the Spitzenberg, as men named it in the marker 
 place, whose deep red, delicate skin enfolded a spicy 
 flavor unrivalled and unapproachable, if only the 
 dexterous, initiated hand could draw it forth. 
 
 The Prince had never read the Epigrams of 
 Martial, but, without knowing that he borrowed 
 from that illustrious author, he had frequently, in 
 his own modern phrase, expressed the sentiment 
 which declares that "Art is not enough for a cook ; 
 he must have the taste of his master." But, alas ! 
 that taste Domcsticus would never acquire, nor 
 could it be imparted to an unwilling recipient, and 
 to have a barrel of Spitzcnbergs in his cellarium, 
 with no one capable of extracting their hidden flavor 
 and transferring it to the palate, was rather an aggra 
 vation than a solace. 
 
 The Princess entered the arena where her self- 
 imposed ordeal was to be endured, with a light, 
 firm step and a beaming face. The time had been 
 when crossing its threshold, on such an errand, she 
 would have encountered fierce frowns and arms 
 a-kimbo, and a discordant clanging of pans and pots, 
 culminating in a pitched battle with Domesticus. 
 But now that she knew all the wiles and stratagems 
 of the enemy, she was able to condense the history of 
 a campaign such as that upon which she was now 
 8 
 
U4 DO ME STIC US 
 
 entering, into as brief a compass as Caesar s famous 
 bulletin. She came, saw, and conquered. What 
 she saw, was a display of pent up wrath which she 
 knew very well was stirred to its lowest depths by 
 this sudden invasion, and would doubtless make 
 the price of success, should she succeed, as great a 
 penalty as could be inflicted, and yet it dared not 
 break out in open revolt against the invincible air 
 and aspect of the Princess, in whose little hand the 
 rolling pin was as complete a symbol of sovereignty 
 as was the sceptre of Charlemange in his iron 
 grasp. 
 
 And now, wonderful to relate, but as true as the 
 most trivial incident recorded in this narrative, as 
 the Little Lady began her task, and, gradually, the 
 various ingredients which she required for its per 
 formance were set in order, and measured, and min 
 gled, by her own dainty fingers, all unseen to her, 
 and invisible to mortal eye, came trooping back, not 
 the entire body, but a select and picked detachment 
 of the same good fairies who had decamped, years 
 before, when she began the combat with Domesti- 
 cus, single handed and alone. This returning pha 
 lanx were ever on the alert, a hovering and recon- 
 noitering force, swift to espy where true courage in 
 the feeblest mortal entered the lists against destruc 
 tive powers of the air, and ready to fly to their suc 
 cor. Only they could not interfere against Domes- 
 ticus, in behalf of any struggling victims of his 
 machinations who had not by their unaided efforts 
 earned the right to such invisible and sure support. 
 
A GRANDMOTHERS APPLE-PIE. i j 5 
 
 According to the wisdom of the ancients, who 
 declared that the divinities helped those who helped 
 themselves, so did the good fairies of this time leave 
 to the wicked arts and treacherous devices of Do- 
 mesticus all the many subjects of his power who 
 were not of such stuff as to persevere, until they 
 discovered the secret of deliverance, in learning to 
 do for themselves all the things he pretended to do 
 for them. 
 
 This secret the Little Lady had learned and knew 
 she had learned, and now that she came to test her 
 strength to the uttermost, all unaided as it seemed, 
 these unseen, nimble adjutants were on the alert, to 
 bring her aid and comfort, and be her invisible allies. 
 They perched on the edges of the amphora in which 
 the materials of the projected pie were enclosed. 
 They steadied the eye, and guided the hand of the 
 Little Lady, as the work went on. They nerved 
 her to reject, with calm disdain, the proffer of lemon, 
 wherewith Domesticus tempted her, in the critical 
 moment. They strengthened her to persist, against 
 threatenings of disaster and ruin, in placing the 
 gleaming segments of the Spitzenbergs on the shin 
 ing glazed bottom of the deep dish, without deposit 
 of any intervening substance. Finally, they hovered 
 round the oven door and kept watch and ward over 
 the fortunes of the completed pie, which, as a last 
 resort, Domesticus would fain have ruined in the 
 baking, by a malicious intermeddling with dampers, 
 had not th? agile sprites, by swift discharges of their 
 invisible artillery to human sight, only chance 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 scintillations of red-hot sparks warded off the 
 traitorous attack, and ensured the triumphant suc 
 cess of this labor of love. 
 
 The victory being fully achieved, the Little Lady 
 sought an interval of repose in her own apartment. 
 This was suddenly broken in upon, by the tidings 
 that Decima, of whom dishonorable mention had 
 been made by the Princess in the morning, as the 
 " tenth since Christmas," was about to depart from 
 the palace, in high dudgeon, and was demanding 
 her wages. 
 
 "Send Decima to me," said the Princess, wholly 
 unconcerned, and with a sense of relief at parting 
 with number ten which fully compensated for any 
 concern as to the coming of number eleven. 
 
 "What is the matter?" she asked, when the 
 self-exiled Decima, enveloped in full outgoing attire, 
 and with a very inflamed visage, appeared on the 
 door-sill. "Are you going away, because I chose 
 to make an apple-pie in my own house?" 
 
 Decima had prepared a valedictory which was 
 quite perfect, to her thinking, but which, slightly 
 marred in the delivery, ran, somewhat, on this wise: 
 
 " Its me with seventeen years experience that 
 never was insulted before by a lady and if it was 
 leaving out lemons was wanted which every genteel 
 respectable family knows that lemons is needed in 
 apple-pies and indeed where would the apple be 
 but for the lemon unless it is plain pastry for taverns 
 and such likes and if it is the bottom crust was to 
 be saved and skimping the likes of that I never saw 
 
A GRANDMOTHER S APPLE-PIE. j j^ 
 
 and no lady would begrudge it and to see it before 
 me own eyes which has lived with the first families 
 and it is me character which is as good as any ones 
 and its all the same as being turned away without 
 warning and its me full month s wages I m wanting." 
 
 " When did you come, Decima ? " said the Prin 
 cess, who, during this harangue, had been going 
 through a somewhat bewildering mental calculation, 
 in an effort to divide twenty-five sestertia by eighteen 
 and had become inextricably entangled in the vul 
 gar fraction which confronted her. 
 
 " Day after to-morrow three weeks and me month 
 is up on the sixteenth it is," said Decima, by way of 
 adding greater obscurity to the calculation. 
 
 " You came at night and you are going away, of 
 your own accord, before dinner, so that you are 
 really entitled to only eighteen days wages at the 
 rate of twenty-five sestertia for the month, but I will 
 call it nineteen days or say twenty, so as to make it 
 two-thirds of a month," this was a concession in 
 the interest of the vulgar fraction, as the Princess 
 saw that to divide twenty-five by nineteen was even 
 more hopeless than the attempt to divide it by 
 eighteen, and she caught at a round number, as a 
 short way out of her difficulty. 
 
 But she was not yet clear of her fraction, for now 
 she must divide twenty-five by twenty, and she had 
 to pause for a further computation. 
 
 " Well, Decima, I will pay you seventeen sestertia, 
 which is more, a great deal more, than is due you. 
 If your wages were twenty-four sertertia, two-thirds 
 
n g DOMESTICUS. 
 
 would be sixteen," said the Little Lady, continuing 
 her calculation aloud, "and two-thirds of one sester- 
 tium to make twenty-five, would be well, seventy- 
 five is near enough, and I will call it a sestertium, 
 so here is the money, and I am sorry you are so 
 foolish." 
 
 Decima had not pursued the mental, or oral arith 
 metic of her mistress. A month s wages, to her, 
 meant twenty-five sestertia no more, nor less and 
 for this amount in its integrity, she had come to 
 make a stand, but there was that in the gesture of 
 the Princess, as she placed the money in the 
 woman s hand, which showed, plainly, that not a 
 sestertium or its smallest part, beyond the proffered 
 sum, was to be gained, by threat or entreaty. She 
 was as thoroughly mistress of her money, as of her 
 mansion. 
 
 "And it s not me month s wages I am to get and 
 ye a rich lady and it s the likes of ye that rob poor 
 girls and a shame it will be to ye as long as ye live 
 and its a bad name I ll give ye it is and I will," 
 and with these mutterings Decima closed her red 
 fingers on the sestertia, turned her back, and was 
 seen no more, in the palace of the Princess. 
 
 The Prince came home in great spirits. He 
 rarely brought the topics of his principality into the 
 domain of home, but before dinner, on this some 
 what eventful day, he told the Princess that he had 
 been playing the grab game, quite successfully. 
 This was something at which the Dry Goods Princes 
 
A GRANDMOTHER S APPLE-PIE. i ig 
 
 were very expert when occasion required. In this 
 particular instance, as the Prince explained, a cer 
 tain unconscionable scoundrel, from a distant part 
 of Magna Patria, had contrived, under the guise of 
 innocent purchases from the Prince, at short credit, 
 to get into his wicked possession a large quantity of 
 staple commodities, without the slightest intention 
 of ever paying for them. This was plainly shown 
 by his nefarious conduct when he got them to his 
 far-off home, where he was a large and prosperous 
 dealer, as was supposed, but where he suddenly 
 shut his doors and turned over, to a confederate, all 
 the property in his possession. Thereupon, the 
 Prince had betaken himself to his jurisconsults, 
 Meum, Tuum & Suum, who were learned in all the 
 laws of Magna Patria, and knew the Pandects, 
 Edicts and Digests by heart, and who, in their learn 
 ing and wisdom, sent forth a pursuer, swift as 
 Mercury, quite as unscrupulous, and twice as 
 shrewd, who pounced upon the defrauding dealer 
 and his whole stock in trade, with a mandate, or 
 precept, known, in that part of Magna Patria where 
 the goods were found, as an attachment. This 
 powerful mandate was placed in the hands of a 
 lictor, who in speedy course of justice, by breaking 
 open doors, and seizing property, and making sales, 
 and otherwise exerting the machinery of the law, 
 had secured and got the Prince s whole debt, in 
 money, with interest and costs, and lictor s fees and 
 poundage. 
 
 This last word seemed so tremendous, as the 
 
1 20 > OMESTICUS. 
 
 Prince gave it forth, by way of climax, that the 
 Little Lady, in the tenderness of her heart, could 
 not help saying, she hoped they did not pound the 
 poor fellow too hard, even if he was so great a 
 scamp. 
 
 Then the Prince laughed, and explained to her 
 that poundage did not mean pounding, at all, but 
 meant the lictor s fees, in addition to his other fees. 
 
 "But why is it called poundage?" asked the 
 Princess ; " it seems a very queer name for fees." 
 
 " I suppose," said the Prince, who, having recov 
 ered his debt, was ready to take almost any risk in 
 connection with this venture, " it is because when 
 people get into the lictor s hands, they are like cattle 
 in a pound, and cannot be got out without paying." 
 
 This definition was thoroughly satisfactory to the 
 Princess, and then, to show her interest in the story, 
 and her sympathy with the Prince, in his success, 
 she inquired if he found his own goods on the 
 premises of the rogue. 
 
 " Yes," said the Prince ; then the Princess asked 
 why he did not take them back, instead of selling 
 the other creditors goods and collecting the money. 
 
 The Prince seemed, for some reason, to think this 
 was a capital joke and so expressed himself, and 
 laughed again, very heartily, and the Princess 
 laughed too, to keep him company, although she 
 could not see the joke. 
 
 They sat down to dinner, and in due course, the 
 apple-pie made its appearance, and was set before 
 tlu Prince. Surely no one will grudge a moment s 
 
A GRANDMOTHERS A rrLE-FIE. j 2 i 
 
 delay for a description of this historic pie. It was 
 embedded in a deep, round, yellowish dish, the top 
 crust swelling slightly from the rim, tinged at every 
 point of its periphery with the exuding juice of the 
 apple, its top embrowned not scorched with a 
 warmer wave of the oven heat, while, underneath 
 the flaky tissues of the outer covering, layer on 
 layer, like the leaves of a full-blown rose, overlap 
 ping and crowding each other, yet each individual 
 and distinct, lay the amber-colored segments of the 
 Spitzenbergs, clear and translucent, with no perfidi 
 ous bottom crust to absorb their generous juices or 
 spoil their natural flavor. 
 
 When the pie was opened, the Prince began to 
 say: 
 
 " Did Decima make this pie? " 
 
 " Decima has gone," said the Princess. 
 
 "A good riddance," said the Prince, as he helped 
 the Princess to the first piece of pie. " I knew she 
 never made it." 
 
 " I declare," said the Prince, as he placed a por 
 tion on the plate for Prima, there is apple in this pie, 
 which, for an apple-pie, is a most extraordinary 
 thing." 
 
 Then, as he put his spoon down into its depths, 
 like a mariner sounding in an unknown sea, and 
 struck the smooth surface underneath, "Upon my 
 word," said the Prince, "there is no bottom crust to 
 this pie," and he helped Secundus and Tertia, re 
 spectively, to liberal shares. 
 
 The Prince then provided, in due course, for him- 
 
122 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 self, and after the first taste, he laid down his knife 
 and fork, looked at the Princess, and exclaimed : 
 
 "Wonders will never cease! There is no lemon 
 in this pie ! " 
 
 "Of course not," said the Princess. 
 
 "And the flavor is not all cooked out of the 
 apples," cried the Prince. "They have the real, 
 genuine, Spitzenberg taste." 
 
 " Certainly they have," said the Princess. 
 
 " I verily believe the age of miracles has returned," 
 said the Prince ; " this is a grandmother s apple-pie 
 and no mistake." 
 
 "Undoubtedly it is," said the Princess. 
 
 "And who made it ? " asked the Prince. 
 
 " I made it," said the Princess. 
 
 There are feelings as we all know, and have been 
 taught, which cannot be expressed in words. The 
 Prince s mouth was full ; his heart was full ; it was 
 only necessary to complete his happiness that his 
 plate should be full. He said nothing, but helped 
 himself to the rest, residue, and remainder of the pie. 
 
 " You seem to be playing the grab game on my 
 pie," said the Little Lady, gaily. 
 
 " Yes," said the Prince, " I have an attachment 
 for it." 
 
 And he laughed, heartily, at this little joke, and 
 so did they all. Not because there was the least 
 merit in the joke, but because, when people are in 
 high good humor, they will laugh at almost any 
 thing. 
 
 The Little Lady had her own quiet source of 
 
A GRANDMOTHERS APPLE-PIE. ^3 
 
 amusement, in the belief, in the very depths of her 
 honest heart, that the Prince s grandmother had 
 never, in the whole course of her long and exem 
 plary life, made a pie half as good as her own, but 
 she was satisfied with things as they were, and per 
 fectly willing to be placed, by the Prince, in a niche 
 on the same level with his grandmother, in his 
 Walhalla, or special shrine, of famous pie-makers. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 GLORIOSA. 
 
 AMONG the votaries and high priestesses of that 
 all-powerful divinity, Societas, none were more 
 conspicuous in the Imperial City than the Princess 
 Gloriosa. Older by only a couple of years than 
 Prima, she was a millenium in advance of her in all 
 the ways of the world. Brought up together as 
 playmates and schoolmates, Gloriosa had married, 
 at an early age, and was soon established as a recog 
 nized social power, by virtue of her beauty, her 
 wit, her vivacity, her force of will, and the supposed 
 wealth of her husband, Novus, a daring and adven 
 turous youth, believed to be one of the special 
 favorites of Fortune, and endowed with a faculty 
 kindred to the fabled gift by which Midas could 
 turn everything he touched into gold. 
 
 Gloriosa, before her marriage, had known very 
 little about gold, or any other circulating medium, 
 except by description, and that, for the most part, 
 in works of the imagination and fancy. Her widowed 
 mother, whose better days in the past, furnished 
 supplies only for memory and melancholy retro 
 spect, found her sole solace in the possibilities of a 
 splendid future for Gloriosa ; and she made every 
 124 
 
GLOR/OS.1. 
 
 I2 5 
 
 sacrifice to gain for her a firm footing on the slippery 
 pathway into the sanctuary of the gilded goddess. 
 Once initiated, she needed no support from other 
 votaries, or fellow-worshipers. She was a ready 
 adept in all the arts and graces which were needed 
 f>r the service in \\hich she had engaged, and when 
 Novus, with all his rapidly made wealth, was wedded 
 to Gloriosa, with all her speedily acquired promi 
 nence, there was a general feeling in the charmed 
 circle that the race had indeed been to the swift, and 
 that a rightful leadership had been established. 
 
 The Little Lady had permitted, if not encouraged, 
 a continuance of the early intimacy between the 
 two friends, partly, because it offered to Prima some 
 opportunities of enjoyment, of which she might 
 otherwise have been deprived, and partly, because 
 her nature was so retiring and contemplative that 
 it needed something of the stimulus which the 
 ardent world-wisdom of Gloriosa was calculated to 
 impart. 
 
 Prima, at this time, coeval with the outbreak of 
 the strife for the Sisterhood, was nearly out of her 
 teens ; to borrow the charming refrain of a stray 
 song, in a noble English drama : 
 
 " She was fresh and she was fair, 
 Glossy was her golden hair, 
 Like a blue sjx>t in the sky, 
 Was her clear and loving eye." 
 
 And yet opinions differed as to her claim to beauty. 
 Many critics, of her QWII se^ denied it absolutely. 
 
I2 6 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 She lacked height ; she lacked pose ; she had fault 
 less teeth, but her mouth was too large; her features 
 were irregular, her nose was not of the true classic 
 type ; and what so many people found in her to 
 admire, they could not, for their lives, divine. The 
 claim to rank as a beauty was one which Prima had 
 never dreamed of asserting on her own behalf, nor 
 had she the least suspicion that it was put forward 
 by anyone in her interest, and she would have been 
 greatly surprised had she come to the knowledge 
 that it was, in fact, a vexed question, stirred with 
 many cups of afternoon tea, and often started 
 afresh at the moment of her entrance into some 
 gay scene, where the rites of Societas were in festal 
 progress. 
 
 Gloriosa, however, was never tired of declaring 
 that Prima was " simply perfect," and this was the 
 true verdict of the majority of voices apt to echo 
 her own. But, in the same breath, she would admit 
 that Prima would never shine as a satellite in the 
 bright, planetary system of Societas. In spite of 
 her opportunities, she would not dance to all the 
 piping of the priestesses. Cinderella s slipper would 
 have cut no figure on her dainty foot. The cardinal 
 doctrine of Societas, that all youth and beauty are 
 predestinated to the round dance, by inevitable 
 decree, she heretically rejected, and while Gloriosa 
 mourned over her defection, consigning her, more in 
 sorrow than in anger, to the penal sufferance and 
 durance vile of the slow-footed sect of the wall 
 flowers, she still hovered and buzzed over her, like a 
 
GLORIOSA. 
 
 12 7 
 
 magnificent and many-colored butterfly above a 
 wee, modest, field flower. 
 
 Gloriosa herself was a full-orbed beauty, of a 
 somewhat aggressive type. She was taller than 
 I rinia ; she filled more space ; her voice was pitched 
 on a higher key; her eyes were more of a Juno 
 gray than of the true cerulean blue ; her luxuriant 
 tresses wore a heavier imprint than the golden- 
 tinted locks of Prima, and seemed of a somewhat 
 baser metal. She was, generally, of a larger pat 
 tern, and her views were on a correspondingly lib 
 eral scale. She was indefatigable in the discharge 
 of her duties, in the service of Societas. Her 
 responsibilities were simply enormous. Her visiting 
 list was like a Bank Ledger. Her engagements 
 were scheduled and tabulated with the precision of 
 a Bureau of Statistics. Her entertainments were 
 organized with the detail of a military campaign. 
 She had a vast army of subordinates, from the 
 humblest camp-follower, who was glad to get an 
 occasional card for a fifth-rate reception, to her 
 staff officers, who led the Grecian in every gay 
 saloon, and whose gilded chariots waited before her 
 palace gates. 
 
 To tell the plain truth, if ever there was a false 
 goddess and sham divinity, it was this same Socie 
 tas. Time was, when her shrine and her service 
 meant something of value to the community, as 
 well as to her immediate votaries. In those earlier 
 days, her precincts were guarded closely and with 
 jealous care. Moat and drawbridge had to be 
 
I2 8 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 passed, portcullis raised, and watchword duly given, 
 before access could be gained to her citadel, or her 
 sanctuary, nor could any one be admitted to her 
 higher mysteries and privileges without due scrutiny, 
 and test, and full performance of all required lustra 
 tions. But now, the ancient landmarks had been 
 rudely broken down, and the great sacred circle of 
 Societas came to resemble the modern circus tent, 
 where every one is welcome who can pay the 
 entrance money, and a penniless straggler, now and 
 then, contrives to crawl in under the flap. The 
 decay dated from the time when, by an edict issued 
 in her name, the test of admission to her inner 
 courts was changed from weight of character to 
 weight of purse, and soon thereafter a wild horde 
 of new-made plutocrats, covered with the slime of 
 Pactolus, came trampling into the sacred enclosure. 
 The great aim of the worship of Societas, as 
 organized by her votaries, was to destroy whatever 
 was natural, and replace it by whatever was artifi 
 cial. They registered vows to substitute the con 
 ventional for the true, and their whole lives were 
 devoted to this end with the all-consuming energy 
 of zealots. They had no written code, but their 
 prescripts, like the Common Law of England, were 
 a vast body of rules, understood by those who 
 enforced them, applied according to their own inter 
 pretation, and, very largely, embedded in customs 
 as inviolate as law. Thus the declaration at the 
 door of a patrician dame to an inquiring visitor 
 "Not at home" was a conventionalism, which, being 
 
12 g 
 
 interpreted, meant that she was at home, but did 
 not choose to admit visitors. This serviceable con 
 trivance \ve may easily suppose to have been origin 
 ated by Domesticus, who drew his sustenance 
 largely from Societas, because it gave him such a 
 safe precedent for carrying a convenient amount of 
 conventionalism into butlers pantries, and other 
 places, and laying his deflections from truth at the 
 front door of his mistress. 
 
 Having thus caused Truth to fall in the street, or 
 on the front steps leading thereto, she was easily 
 defeated even where else. In current interchanges 
 of civility ; in the acceptance or regret of proffered 
 hospitality; in the exchange of courtesies; in the 
 bestowal of gifts; in the endless round of commu 
 nications, the great law of conventionality was 
 supreme. From this lower grade of purely human 
 affairs, the ascent to open hostility against the 
 established order of Nature was easy. Societas, 
 like Milton s Satan, hated the sun, and was as bent 
 on turning Night into Day as ever that arch enemy 
 was in making Evil a substitute for Good. It was 
 one of her prime and absolute requirements that 
 the best energies of her followers should be devoted 
 to this end. Her high festivities must always begin 
 about the time that the human race, in general, wants 
 to go to bed, and terminate a little before the time 
 appointed to the sons of men to rise and go forth 
 to their daily labor. To this law everything mu.st 
 icrificed; the peace and order of families ; the 
 bloom and beauty of maidenhood ; the vigor and 
 9 
 
DOMESTIC US. 
 
 strength of early manhood. True, the fair votaress 
 might float away, in her gossamer wraps, in the 
 small morning hours, to unbroken slumber pro 
 tracted to midday, and deem this a full equivalent 
 for the rejected sleep which the night had prof 
 fered, a delusion, sure to be dispelled sooner or 
 later, perhaps too late. True, her attendant cava 
 lier might think his stock of strength enabled him 
 to make the brief rest caught between the end of 
 the night s revel and the beginning of the day s 
 work suffice to furnish him for the exactions of his 
 calling, or, if exempt from labor, he might suppose 
 that in the vacuity, or idleness, or varied sports of 
 the daytime, he could recruit his energies for the 
 ever-recurring, nightly treadmill of gayety. But, in 
 reality, the whole system was a long crusade 
 against Nature and natural law, kept up with cease 
 less vigilance and fanatical zeal by the standing 
 army of Societas, whose veterans, decorated with 
 diamonds and lace, tottered in the glare of the mid 
 night lamps, and whose recruits, bright with the 
 radiance of youth, were willing to risk everything 
 in her perilous service. 
 
 "Why cannot people enjoy themselves at rea 
 sonable hours ? " said Prima, one day, to Gloriosa, 
 when she made her an unusually early visit, and 
 the conversation had begun with a glowing account 
 of a recent high festival of Societas. " You wonder 
 that I avoid your grand crushes. It is not because 
 I do not like being among so many people on 
 the contrary I find a vast deal of amusement and 
 
GLORIOSA. ,3, 
 
 entertainment, but I am an absentee, simply and 
 solely, because I prefer to be abed and asleep 
 between midnight and morning. 
 
 " My dear Prima, you talk like a Spartan grand 
 mother. Would you do your dancing by daylight? " 
 
 41 No," said Prima, " but the very little dancing I 
 do, I should like the privilege of doing before bed 
 time. It may be Spartan grandmotherliness, but 
 more than half the ways of Societas seem to me 
 not only absurd, but absolutely wrong." 
 
 " Go on, Prima, you look so pretty when you are 
 preaching." 
 
 " I can t help it if I do, but if ever I had an 
 authentic call to preach, I should not waste it on 
 you or any of the case-hardened, high-heeled priest 
 esses. I only wish you had sense enough for a 
 new departure. You could do a world of good, 
 and make yourself immortal, if you had the will and 
 the courage to head a revolution against these de 
 structive, unnatural hours, but I know you will 
 never do it." 
 
 " Never, indeed ! the very thought of such a thing 
 is high treason ; the first vow of my novitiate bound 
 me to renounce everything reasonable, natural, and 
 sensible, where it contravened the edicts of Societas, 
 and I mean to live up to my professions. But, my 
 precious Prima, I came this morning on a special 
 errand, from which our discussion must not divert 
 me. Who is this Juventus I am hearing so much 
 about? " 
 
 With this question, Gloriosa darted a keen, inqui- 
 
1^2 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 sitive glance at Prima. Her shot, whether at a 
 venture or with deliberate aim, hit the mark, if 
 blushes are a true index, and it was followed by 
 a second, before Prima had rallied from the effect 
 of the first. 
 
 " Is it true that he is a machinist and works in a 
 factory ? " 
 
 " He works for his living, as most men do, who 
 are of any account." 
 
 " But does he work for wages, like ordinary 
 laborers like Domesticus ? " 
 
 " I suppose," said Prima, very quietly, having 
 regained entire self-possession, " he works for pay, 
 just as the ediles, and praetors, and jurisconsults, 
 do. Why not ? " 
 
 " Oh, certainly, the laborer is worthy of his hire. 
 It was his social measure I wanted to take, and 
 to ascertain, if I could, how he came to find favor 
 in your blue eyes. Did he come here to mend the 
 water pipes or tune the organ pipes ?" 
 
 "He came here to dinner, on papa s invitation, 
 with the other wizards of the Imperial Society for 
 the Maintenance of the Solar System. You know 
 about them, I presume ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, they walk in the clouds and discourse 
 about the sun. They maintain a great deal of eat 
 ing, and drinking, and discussing, but I don t believe 
 it affects the solar system the least bit." 
 
 " Very well, papa had them to dinner, and Juven- 
 tus, being the youngest wizard, took me out." 
 
 "And then, presumably, you had cube roots for 
 
GLORIOSA. I33 
 
 Iwrs a\cui*rcs t and conic sections for a piece de 
 resistance." 
 
 " No, we talked about a great many things, much 
 more interesting, your sweet self for example, and 
 I told him the story of your symposium when the 
 lady guests pocketed the gold salt-cellars, at their 
 plates, on the pretext that, like favors at the Gre 
 cian, they were to be reduced to possession, and 
 carried off, at the close of the entertainment." 
 
 "An excellent story," said Gloriosa, "to be taken 
 with as many grains of salt as there were in the 
 salt-cellars. Not a word of truth in it. But, cer 
 tainly, I can afford to have it told if my guests can, 
 and to be talked about is the first step toward fame. 
 To become a dinner table topic is half the battle." 
 
 " And you are always my favorite topic. I de 
 scribed to him your Etruscan room, which is so far 
 in advance of everything, but I didn t dare tell him 
 how much the ceiling cost." 
 
 " If it ever needs repairing, I will send for him. 
 Tell me, Prima, do you know anything about his 
 antecedents ? What are his belongings ? Who are 
 his people ?" 
 
 " His people are ship builders, way off, on the 
 coast of Dirigo." 
 
 " Oh, a mechanic and the son of a mechanic ! " 
 
 " Yes, but he is not an ordinary mechanic. He 
 is very highly educated." 
 
 " So is my chef," said Gloriosa, " he speaks three 
 languages, and cooks in seven, and, I dare say, has 
 higher wages than your prodigy, who may be a 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 wonderful workman and a wonderful wizard, but we 
 cannot let down the bars for such as he." 
 
 " There is certainly no need," said Prima. " He 
 is inside already." 
 
 " It is quite out of the question," persisted Glori- 
 osa, " a working-man may have all the education 
 you please ; it will help him in his place and, per 
 haps, help him to rise from it ; but as long as he 
 stays in it, how can he possibly have any social 
 position ? " 
 
 " Surely," said Prima, " his education entitles him 
 to position, just as much, if riot a great deal more, 
 than the money of a rich man who can hardly write 
 or spell his own name. Besides, there is a vast dif 
 ference in work. His is not menial or servile, in 
 any sense, but of the highest kind, requiring brain 
 and talent, and even genius, like the work of the old- 
 time bridge-builders. What does Pontifex Maximus 
 mean except the greatest of bridge-builders ? " 
 
 " That is all very fine, if we are to go back a 
 thousand years, or so. I dare say the mound- 
 builders were equally distinguished in their day 
 and generation, but the kind of worth that makes 
 the man, now, is not his being able to work, but his 
 being able to do without work. Societas has settled 
 all that, and she will rule out Juventus. No gentle 
 man works with his hands." 
 
 " Then I renounce all my allegiance to Societas," 
 said Prima, with unwonted spirit in her tone and 
 look. " What is there to-day of any real value, 
 except labor, or what labor has created ? Did you 
 
GLORIOSA. !35 
 
 ever think, Gloriosa, that if the men and women who 
 do the work of the world, outdoors and indoors, 
 were, all at once, to stop working, the whole race 
 would starve, as soon as they had eaten up what 
 was left in the larders? A gold heap or a silver 
 heap would be no better then than a dust heap. You 
 are living every moment by some one s labor and \vt 
 you despise the laborer. I will take back what I 
 said about differences in work. All work is good, 
 and true, and noble, if the aim and the end are 
 right." 
 
 Gloriosa thought she could divine the possible 
 source of Prima s heretical declarations, but she was 
 in earnest when she said that she liked to hear her 
 preach, and so she chose to fan the flame she had 
 kindled. 
 
 " And when this somewhat improbable catastrophe 
 takes place, and everybody stops working all at once 
 (except Juventus, for, if he is what you paint him, 
 I suppose he will keep on all the same), what par 
 ticular branch of industry do you propose to take 
 up?" 
 
 " Oh, I will come and teach you plain sewing and 
 ever so many other useful arts," said Prima, fright 
 ened at her little flight into the region of political 
 economy, and making haste to get back to the 
 proper level of parlor platitudes. 
 
 "Prima," said Gloriosa, solemnly, " I really and 
 truly believe you are in love with Juventus. You 
 must promise me one thing, on your sacred word 
 and honor. If he asks you to marry him, say No. " 
 
136 
 
 DOMESTIC US. 
 
 " But I have said Yes already." 
 " When ? " shrieked Gloriosa. 
 "Yesterday," said Prima. 
 
 " Unhappy giri ! It was only yesterday I heard 
 he was going to the war." 
 " So he is." 
 
 " And when may that be ? " 
 " To-morrow," said Prima. 
 
 There was a pause. Gloriosa was quick of wit, 
 and her thoughts came and went with rapidity. If 
 Juventus were going to the war, he might be killed, 
 or he might come back at the head of a legion. In 
 either case, he would be a hero. It was a chance 
 for an epitaph or a brace of epaulettes. A military 
 record would wipe out the stain of the workshop. 
 At all events, Prima would have her own way, and 
 why not make a virtue of necessity, and take them 
 both under her protecting wing. 
 
 Prima, meanwhile, was more stunned by her own 
 announcement than the friend to whom it had been 
 made. She was barely regaining full consciousness, 
 when she felt herself in the tight embrace of Glori 
 osa, whose stout arms, encased in their many-but 
 toned gloves, were clasped about her, and their re 
 united hearts were again beating in unison, as they 
 basked in the glow of that incommunicable rapture 
 with which the secret of a fresh engagement never 
 fails to suffuse the spirit of the gentler sex. 
 
w 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 GOING TO THE FRONT. 
 
 HAT Prima told Gloriosa was the whole truth. 
 Juventus had found a friendly reception 
 and a continuing welcome under the roof of the 
 Prince, from the time of his first introduction, in 
 the train of the scientists. 
 
 He soon became a favored guest. 
 
 The Princess had seen him render a casual act of 
 courtesy, in a public place, at some personal incon 
 venience, to an elderly dame, and this incident, even 
 more than his deferential bearing toward herself, 
 gave him an exceptional standing in her good 
 opinion, in view of the lamentable decline, which 
 she affirmed to exist, in the respect paid by youth 
 to age. 
 
 The Prince liked his coming, because, as he said, 
 the young man always told him something he did 
 not know before. 
 
 Secundus, the bright princclet of the family, was 
 helped by Juventus out of many of the snares and 
 pitfalls, filled with deceptive signs and delusive fig 
 ures, into which the pedagogues delighted to lead 
 unwary youthful adventurers in the path of 
 knowledge. 
 
^3 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 He had won the heart of little Tertia by a 
 marvelous restoration of the scattered members of 
 her favorite doll, after a catastrophe which had 
 seemed fatal to its curiously contrived existence. 
 
 Even more than to any one else in the house 
 hold, was he an object of admiration, almost of 
 worship, to Stella, the special ministrant with whom 
 Domesticus had invested Prima. She thought 
 Juventus had saved her life. In fact, he had stepped 
 opportunely, between her and possible, if not prob 
 able, death. As he was going his round in one of 
 the workshops, where she tended a machine, a 
 sudden break threw the mechanism out of gear, and 
 she was in danger of being caught and fearfully 
 maimed in the whirl of the disorganized and 
 destructive mass. Juventus, by a sudden and 
 timely act, had snatched her from this dangerous 
 plight, just at the moment of a crash which might 
 have been fatal. This accident so affected her 
 nervous system that she could not safely return to 
 machine work, and when he told the story to the 
 Princess, she made a place for the girl in her 
 household. She waited on Prima, giving a great 
 deal of uninstructed, but willing service, and a 
 great deal of trouble in her unregulated methods 
 of mind and manners, but, in spite of all these short 
 comings, finding sympathy in the kind hearts of her 
 mistresses. 
 
 To Prima, Juventus seemed unlike most young 
 men, and this, she thought, was all she thought 
 about him. 
 
GOING TO THE FRONT. 
 
 Meanwhile, Juventus found himself thinking more 
 and more about Prima, until, after the old fashion 
 whereby human hearts are entwined and human 
 destinies interwoven, there was nothing in the wide 
 universe for him, in sentiment, in resolve, in action; 
 in the seeing of the eye, the hearing <>f the ear, the 
 imagining of the heart, which did not seem to draw 
 its vital breath from this bright ideal. His plans 
 and purposes found a new inspiration and a new 
 motive, and he seemed to himself to have come, all 
 at once, within a single step of the summit of hap 
 piness. 
 
 Juventus, as he worked and walked, and slept 
 and waked, carried with him this thought of Prima, 
 which he could not dissever from another and 
 earlier thought, whose first access had filled him 
 with an intense ardor, kindred to that which now 
 stirred his soul with the throbbings of a new affec 
 tion. To the love of country, this added love 
 seemed only a later and more perfect outgrowth 
 from one native stock. The same chord of his 
 nature vibrated to the touch of loyalty and love. 
 
 At last, out of a myriad of glimmering, con 
 fused, and intermingled certainties and uncertainties, 
 and hopes and fears, vast and vague as the unre 
 solved nebulae of Andromeda, a clear and bright 
 resolve fashioned itself in his mind, and was wrought 
 into shape as follows : 
 
 "JUVENTUS TO PRIMA, Greeting: 
 
 <l It has been the desire of my heart, ever since 
 
140 
 
 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 that first firing on the flag, to volunteer and go to 
 the front 
 
 "When the great Flamen, whose words have 
 always been as oracles to me, declared that the 
 strife would be ended in sixty days, I was willing 
 to wait Now, that it seems as if the truer prophecy 
 was that other word, for uttering which a brave 
 man was sneered at as a lunatic, that three hundred 
 thousand men would be needed to save the Sister 
 hood, I must be one of them. The call seems 
 plain to me, and there are some good and true 
 men who will also go, if I go. And I must go at 
 once, if at all. The one thing I want to carry with 
 me is your heart A man who in facing danger, per 
 haps death, and who turns his back on a career just 
 entered upon, and a livelihood barely secured, has, 
 I know full well, no right to ask the sacrifice I 
 solicit from you, even could he count on the affec 
 tion which might make it possible. Yet I must 
 venture all, knowing that you have courage and 
 faith, and believing that I can make you happy, if 
 only you can return my love. 
 
 " Do not write ; I will come this evening." 
 
 The earlier portion of this missive told no news 
 to Prima. She had known, well enough, that 
 Juventus would go to the war. She had hoped this 
 and feared it, and feared it and hoped it, and then 
 tried, in vain, to persuade herself that she neither 
 feared nor hoped it, nor in fact cared at all and 
 yet she was certain he would go. 
 
GOING TO THE l-RONT. I4I 
 
 The latter part of the letter was a genuine sur 
 prise. She had not brought herself to the point of 
 looking on Juventus as a lover. She only knew 
 that she was happy in his society, that she looked 
 forward, with pleasure, to his coming, that she 
 missed his absence, and that was all, absolutely all. 
 
 Nevertheless, there was not an instant of doubt 
 in her heart, as to her response. To have the love 
 of a brave, true soul, such as his, was a treasure in 
 itself, and a warrant for all risks. Prima did not 
 hesitate or delay. She sat, for a few minutes, in the 
 stillness of her happy thoughts, and then went to her 
 mother, placed the letter in her hands and knelt 
 before her. Presently, there was a locked embrace ; 
 a beating of hearts close to one another; and a 
 season of silent weeping, which he may attempt to 
 describe who can analyze a mother s tears, or fathom 
 the depths of a daughter s love. 
 
 That night Juventus came, and as the slight figure 
 of Prima, in spotless white, moved towards him 
 through the dimly lighted space which she seemed 
 to fill with sudden radiance, almost before he could 
 discern her features he caught sight of the blended 
 colors in the silken girdle which bound her waist, 
 the red, white and blue. He asked nothing more. 
 This mute, inarticulate " yes," breathed in the 
 symbol of the cause he was going forth to serve, 
 gave him the answer for which he had hardly dared 
 to hope, and with the confirming clasp of the tiny, 
 trembling hand he rushed forward to claim as his 
 own, no word was needed, and no word was given. 
 
142 
 
 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 The Prince was somewhat slow to acquiesce in 
 the arrangements of the young people. He thought 
 the whole thing was premature. In a general way, 
 he believed in the future of Juventus, just as he 
 believed in the eventual success of a great many 
 enterprises which yielded no immediate return. He 
 was opposed to his going to the war, because, in 
 reality, he was opposed to the war; but he knew 
 that he could no more stop him than he could 
 hinder the great rivers, which flowed past the Im 
 perial City, from emptying into the ocean. 
 
 He could not help thinking the war needless. 
 It should have been prevented, in some way, 
 he did not know how. He was afraid it would be 
 a failure. He doubted whether it would be worth 
 what it cost. Of course, he was for maintaining 
 the Sisterhood. There was no other alternative, 
 but like so many of his class in private stations and 
 so many in public positions, he was in opposition to 
 every measure to maintain it. He could see nothing 
 certain about the war in its continuance, except its 
 expense, and nothing definite in its results, except 
 disaster. He was not in a frame of mind to take 
 very kindly to what seemed to him to be giving an 
 inopportune preference to sentiment over sound 
 judgment. Still, the time was very short, owing to 
 the necessity of immediate acceptance by Juventus 
 of an offered position which assured him speedy 
 active service. The household party of sentiment 
 seemed to be fully organized and in the ascendant ; 
 and he was not the man to stand in the way of plans 
 
(,W.V(; TO THE FRONT. 
 
 143 
 
 as to which the Princess and Prima were fully in 
 accord. But, for reasons of his own, he was sorry 
 there was need of haste, and specially sorry for the 
 baleful cause of the haste, the strife of the Sister 
 hood. 
 
 The eve of the departure of Juventus was filled 
 up with many momentous affairs. Going to the 
 front had ceased to be a holiday excursion. It 
 was as serious a business as a man could enter upon, 
 and in spite of the new-found happiness which 
 Juventus and Prima shared, the cloud of the im 
 pending separation, with its unknown risks and 
 dangers, hung over them. 
 
 The children were sorely perplexed. Their satis 
 faction at having Juventus, with all his wonderful 
 arts, an actual member of the family, was intense. 
 It was like catching a live conjurer and keeping him 
 in a cage. But they were disconsolate at the 
 thought of his leaving them, even though carried 
 off, to their fancy, in a blaze of military glory. 
 
 Stella, who had been violent in her rejoicing at a 
 union which she attributed mainly to her own in 
 cessant prayers for such a result, was ready with 
 certain consecrated amulets and charms which were 
 to render Juventus bullet-proof, sabre-proof, and 
 bomb-proof. 
 
 The Prince and Princess were busied with many 
 and various thoughts of their own, and Juventus and 
 Prima found the evening hours too short for what it 
 wa - in their hearts to say. They made as manyprom- 
 ises,and protestations, and plans, as could be crowded 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 into the fast flying moments, and wasted some pre 
 cious time, rather foolishly, but prettily, in selecting, 
 out of all the twinkling stars with which the sky 
 was sprinkled, one bright particular orb, in respect 
 whereof they would bind themselves, by solemn 
 league and covenant, that toward it, on every night 
 whereon it should be visible and within their range of 
 vision, their gaze should be directed, and a last good 
 night exhaled. Many stars were successively put in 
 nomination for this high choice, and after an active 
 canvass, the unanimous suffrages of the lovers fell, at 
 last, on the North Star, as best symbolizing the con 
 stancy, devotion, and singleness of aim, which entered 
 into the sentiments to be breathed from these two 
 devoted spirits, from their separate places on this 
 little planet, toward its distant polar sphere. 
 
 The leave-taking of Juventus finished, and his last 
 adieu given, the Prince walked with him, a short 
 distance, along the broad avenue, and on parting, 
 said, with an unwonted tremor in his voice 
 
 " My dear boy, we shall hope to hear only good 
 news from you. You must be prepared to hear 
 some news from me which may not be good." 
 
 " I trust," said Juventus, recalling a chance word 
 of Prima as to the depressed spirits of her father, 
 " there is no illness, of which I have not been 
 told." 
 
 "No, I am well enough," said the Prince, "but 
 there are business troubles I may not be able to 
 surmount. I cannot tell yet. It is this which has 
 made me seem less ready to accede to your plans 
 
GOING TO Till-. FRONT. 
 
 45 
 
 than might otherwise have been the case. Prima s 
 future may be seriously affected." 
 
 "If I can deserve your good esteem," said Juven- 
 tus eagerly, "and if you are willing to trust her 
 future \vith me, this is all I ask." 
 
 The Prince pressed his hand and turned back. 
 He went into the deserted and darkened parlor, and 
 sat alone for several hours, not going up stairs to 
 his bed room, until near the dawn of morning. 
 The Princess did not know of this, or miss his com 
 ing. She was with Prima, who had not known, until 
 the final farewell, what parting meant, when, with the 
 sorrow of separation, it mingled the dark forebodings 
 born of the terrors of a cruel and bloody war. 
 
 10 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A BAD NAME. 
 
 THE dire threat and malediction which Decima 
 had hurled, as a Parthian and parting shaft, 
 over the obnoxious apple-pie, at its lovely author, 
 did not spend its force in the air. The bad name 
 she had vindictively promised to give was duly be 
 stowed. The Princess, in her conscious rectitude, 
 and in the quiet pursuit of her daily round of duty, 
 had paid no more attention to the outgivings, than 
 she had to the outgoing, of Decima, having, long 
 ago, learned that nine-tenths of the loud talk of 
 Domesticus was sound and fury, signifying nothing. 
 She did not realize that the giving of a bad name 
 was a kind of final and irreversible anathema and 
 interdict which Domesticus held in reserve for ex 
 treme cases, as the old Popes fulminated their bulls 
 of excommunication, by way of firing the last and 
 hottest shot in the well-filled locker out of which 
 they peppered recusant kings, emperors, and non- 
 defenders of the faith. 
 
 So, when the Little Lady sallied forth, in her 
 innocence, to consult the sorcerers, and to secure 
 the successor of Decima, in the sphere of the sauce 
 pan, she was greatly taken aback by what she 
 146 
 
A BAD NAME. \^j 
 
 encountered. The first shape summoned for her 
 scrutiny no sooner caught sight of her, and sur 
 veyed her, than she lied, with a shriek of terror, as 
 if from contact with a leper; while from the murky 
 lurking-place of the ministering spirits, to which 
 she retired, was heard, as through a conceit d dia 
 pason, a confused murmur of objurgation which fell 
 on the Little Lady s astonished ear like the hissing 
 of the serpents which encircled the head of Medusa. 
 
 All the spells of the sorcerer were unavailing. 
 The Little Lady had a bad name. She was under 
 the ban of Domesticus. If he could have his cruel 
 way, no one should ever again give her aid and 
 comfort or service. She might die of hunger; 
 she might perish of thirst; she might be houseless 
 and homeless ; but not a morsel of bread, not a drop 
 of water, not a helping hand, should be afforded her 
 by him or his. 
 
 What she was reported, in these imprecating 
 depths, and by these wickedly wagging tongues, to 
 have done, to mark her out for this brand of Domes 
 ticus, was something of which even Decima, when 
 she set on foot her revengeful outcry, had not 
 dreamed. The utmost that she charged against the 
 Little Lady was that she had, by a single wrongful 
 and malicious act, robbed an apple-pie of its bottom 
 crust, and a poor girl of a month s wages, and that, 
 with one blow of her high hand, she had evicted the 
 lemon from its lawful homestead in the heart of the 
 pie, and turned an honest woman out of doors. 
 
 This was bad enough, but as the accusation was 
 
148 
 
 DOMEST1CUS. 
 
 caught up and tossed from willing tongues to greedy 
 ears, along the endless whispering gallery which 
 Domesticus had constructed, and in which his 
 followers waited, it grew apace, and to frightful pro 
 portions. The Little Lady had invented and prac 
 ticed unheard-of cruelties. She was the woman 
 who had driven away the lady who did her cooking. 
 She was subject to spasms of insane hatred against 
 Domesticus. It was unsafe to come under her roof. 
 She kept her household at the starving point. She 
 allowed no rest or respite, not a day, or an hour 
 off, or an evening out. She had ordered a good- 
 looking and inoffensive young parcel clerk of a re 
 spectable grocer, out of the house, with fierce denun 
 ciation, simply because he wanted to spend the 
 entire morning with the housemaids. She had 
 forbidden* card-parties, below stairs. She had 
 emptied a flagon into the sink, with her own hands, 
 because she declared that it was falsely labeled cough 
 mixture, which it was, but for all that no lady would 
 have done it. She had brained several unoffending 
 persons with the rolling pin, and if her premises 
 should be searched there was no telling what might 
 be found ; and even if old Tremens should tell all 
 he knew about the ghosts that went up and down 
 the cellar stairs, in the dead of night, when he 
 kept the house one summer, the mansion would 
 soon be marked by the avengers "and made a howl 
 ing heap, it would." 
 
 This time, however, Domesticus had overshot the 
 mark. True, he had a momentary triumph. The 
 
A BAD NAME. \ 49 
 
 Little Lady was obliged to retire, ignominiously, 
 and with a sense of leaving pointed fingers, and 
 cruel calumnies, and derisive epithets, behind her, 
 and she felt as though she were doing penance, in 
 public, for some heinous crime. The humiliation 
 was only for a very short time, and it was followed, 
 on her part, by a healthful reaction of good humor. 
 If Domesticus had only found food for derision in 
 her honest, though futile efforts at economic rule, 
 during the brief episode of her weights and meas 
 ures, she now, in her turn, found only amusement 
 and a sense of whimsical pity at this ebullition of 
 his wrath, which, in reality, did her no more harm 
 than the fierce looks of the stiff-jointed old giant 
 who sat in his cave and grinned at Christian, on his 
 way to the Celestial City, did to that valiant pilgrim. 
 
 She came home, as from a matinee at the Amphi 
 theatre, and recounted her experience to Prima, who 
 was, at first, a little frightened. 
 
 " I declare," she said, " this is outrageous. It is 
 all Decima s doings. Cannot papa have that dread 
 ful woman arrested? To set on foot such slanders 
 must surely be a crime to be punished by the 
 judges." 
 
 " If all the people, high and low, who slander 
 other people were to be arrested," replied the Prin 
 cess, with a wonderful access of wisdom, " the judges 
 would have their hands so full with them that all 
 other criminals would go scot free. Once upon a 
 time, such a thing as this would have made me feel 
 dreadfully, and I should have had several crying 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 spells over it, but the tender grace of a day that is 
 dead, if it was a grace, belongs to that remote period, 
 and I have grown as tough as a knot of gnarled 
 oak." 
 
 " But if they won t live with you, mamma, what 
 are we going to do ? " 
 
 " This gust will blow itself out," said the Princess. 
 " So many other mistresses will be given bad names 
 that, by and by, they won t be able to remember 
 who are on the black list and who are off it." 
 
 " Why not do as the Princess Prompta told us, 
 the other day, she does ? " said Prima. " She cap 
 tures new arrivals at the shore end of the ship s 
 gang-blanks, who cannot speak or understand, a 
 word of our mother tongue, and gets them into her 
 service, before Domesticus has a chance to put his 
 clutches on them, and then she teaches them every 
 thing herself." 
 
 " Yes, but didn t you hear the story she told of 
 the foreign virago, over six feet tall, who, when, at 
 the end of the first month, her ten sestertia were 
 paid her, held up ten bony fingers, three times, 
 in succession, and poured forth such a volley of 
 Norse or Runic, or some other unknown tongue, 
 that she had to give her all the money she had in 
 the house, and a silk dress, and ever so much imita 
 tion lace besides." 
 
 " I suppose we must send for old Patella," said 
 Prima. 
 
 " I sent for her, before I came up stairs," said the 
 Princess. 
 
A BAD NAME. \ 5 i 
 
 " Old Patella " was a stand-by of the family, of the 
 rank and file of Domesticus, who having been gen 
 erously helped, in the poverty of her early days, by 
 the Princess, as well as kept in her service, had 
 graduated to the degree and dignity of day-work 
 and lived in a secluded altitude of her own, whence 
 she descended to assist her patrons, as occasion 
 required. She had been a hard-working, indefati 
 gable woman, skillful with her scrubbing-brush, and 
 able to turn her hand to almost any department of 
 service. Besides which she was reputed to have 
 saved all she had earned, beyond her very frugal 
 needs and the due stipend paid at the shrine of her 
 devotions. 
 
 "What should we do," the Prince had often 
 said, " if we were not sure that old Patella is pray 
 ing for us, night and day? " 
 
 "A brilliant idea strikes me," said Prima ; " if you 
 are under the ban of Domesticus, why not teach 
 Stella to cook ? She is wonderfully bright, only her 
 intelligence always seems to be about the wrong 
 thing. It would be a good plan to concentrate it 
 on the culinary art." 
 
 " I must leave Stella to you," said the Princess. 
 " I have got beyond trying to teach the rudiments." 
 
 " But, mamma, how many, and how much, you 
 have taught." 
 
 " I know I have, and perhaps that is really the 
 way in which I have learned to do for myself. The 
 teacher s best pay is very often what he gains from 
 the instruction he gives to others. I might, even 
 
152 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 now, be willing to teach what I know, to any one 
 wanting to learn, but unteachableness is the badge 
 of the whole race to which Stella belongs." 
 
 " Still, we can t send her away, and why may not 
 I try the experiment ? I will get all the new re 
 ceipt books and cooking books, and she is a good 
 reader and has real taste ; perhaps I can really and 
 truly help you, more than you think, and then, you 
 know, according to what you have just said, even if 
 the pupil learns nothing, the teacher may learn some 
 thing." 
 
 " It will be the blind leading the blind, I fear," 
 said the Princess, " but you may make any venture 
 you please with Stella." 
 
 Prima was an adept at higher instruction, as she 
 was with her needle, and in various arts requiring 
 skill and dexterity of hand. This was her first ex 
 cursion into the perilous region she proposed to 
 explore, in her new capacity of guide and pioneer, 
 with Stella as her sole follower, but she was deter 
 mined to try her fortune in the fresh field. 
 
 The science of dietetics was now approached on 
 the side of the intellect and the imagination. Prima 
 invested some irrecoverable sums in ponderous vol 
 umes, which were to the new subject of her study 
 what the Pandects and Digests were to the body of 
 the law. They codified the whole vast science and 
 reduced it to a perfect system. Here were diagrams 
 of prize bullocks, and fatted calves, and trussed 
 fowls, all exhibited with lines, and letters, and fig 
 ures, in an attractive simplicity, such as on the 
 
A BAD NAM I-:. !^ 
 
 pages of Euclid charm the eye of the beginner in 
 geometry. 
 
 Prima, as she pursued her studies, and took in 
 not only these guide books and digests of the art, 
 but explored its wider range, was amazed at the 
 learning which had been lavished on the culinary 
 art ; at the great names which were identified with 
 its triumphs; the memories it enshrined, and the 
 history it had created. It was the earliest hand 
 maid of hospitality, when men entertained angels 
 unawares. It was coeval with the sacred ties of 
 friendship, and the first altar-fires of devotion. It 
 was interwoven with the threads of classic song and 
 story; with the rude legends of barbaric races; with 
 the whole stately growth of Civilization. It was the 
 ceaseless strengthener of brain and muscle ; the 
 great stay of human labor ; the promoter of genial 
 intercourse ; the source of inexhaustible wit, and 
 humor, and high discourse; the foster-mother of all 
 the fair humanities. And yet, was it not in many 
 aspects, a lost art; and where, oh where, was the 
 plastic touch at which it would re-ass.ert its rightful 
 place, and be once more a benefaction in the homes 
 of men ! 
 
 Prima, arrayed in her panoply of literature, and 
 Stella, in her illiterate nakedness, plunged into the 
 breakers, and were, of course, taken very far out to 
 sea by the undertow of their absolute ignorance. 
 They began by attempting the most difficult dishes, 
 and ended by a waste of raw material unparalleled 
 in the domestic economy of the Princess. It was 
 
154 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 as if a tyro in the rudiments of drawing had under 
 taken to make a prize copy of the Laocoon. At 
 the nearest point of success, in one of their sim 
 plest endeavors, Prima left Stella to watch the seem 
 ingly favorable conditions to which they had brought 
 the compounded elements of a projected pudding, 
 in order that she might finish a letter to Juventus. 
 During her absence, the strains of martial music, 
 indicating the passing of a legion on its way to the 
 distant front of the war, drew Stella to the nearer 
 front of the palace, to shed a few tears and wave a 
 greeting and farewell ; on her return, the utter col 
 lapse and irretrievable ruin of the pudding were as 
 obvious as the traditional fate of the slapjacks 
 which Alfred the Great forgot to turn, at the criti 
 cal point of his country s fate. Stella, in her efforts 
 to remedy the disaster, contrived to upset a kettle 
 of hot water upon her blundering self, and was 
 conveyed, in a scalded condition, to the upper 
 regions, where Prima had no consolation in tend 
 ing her except the thought that she might be learn 
 ing something which would fit her for hospital ser 
 vice, in case Juventus should have the ill-luck to 
 come home with a wound. 
 
 Practical cooking, from a literary point of view, 
 having been demonstrated to be a failure, Prima 
 willingly confessed that she had begun at the wrong 
 end, and that this department of human effort and 
 skill, like every other higher it might be, but not 
 a whit more needful for human progress must have 
 its regular and gradual processes of training and 
 
A BAD NAME. \^ 
 
 instruction. First the blade, then the ear, and then 
 the full corn in the ear, is a law of development 
 which common sense will apply as well to the 
 acquisition of the art of cooking the corn as to the 
 art of cultivating it. Minerva might spring, full 
 armed, from the brain of Jove, in the golden age of 
 mythology, but it is unreasonable to expect a white- 
 frocked and white-capped Chef, with his array of 
 countless saucepans, to bustle into being out of 
 nothingness, at the whimpering cry of a distressed 
 housewife. Everybody else is trained for their 
 work, everybody else is taught, apprenticed, bound 
 out, articled, or matriculated, but Domesticus has, 
 somehow, set his foot on the rule of growth and 
 tutelage, and established ignorance as the primal 
 and permanent law of his disordered realm. 
 
 " Why should not these things which are all so 
 very needful for comfort and happiness, in all homes, 
 high and low, be taught, like other branches ?" 
 said Prima to the Princess. 
 
 " They ought to be," said the Princess, " and on 
 the same principle, that since you dismounted, so 
 gracefully, or ungracefully, from your very high 
 horse, after Stella had been thrown, you are now, as I 
 notice, taking lessons of old Patella in the simplest 
 mixtures, there should be regularly established 
 schools to teach these useful arts." 
 
 " I have been thinking about it," said Prima, "and 
 my high horse, as you call him, will not, I hope, 
 prove a wholly useless animal. I have ridden him 
 fast enough, and far enough, to arrive at some con- 
 
1 5 6 
 
 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 elusions which I want to compare with your own, 
 and have you tell me whether they are all wrong." 
 
 " I dare say they are all quite right, Prima," said 
 the Princess ; " I am only glad if you can express 
 them, for the subject is a wonderfully muddling one ; 
 and while my convictions are clear to my own 
 mind, I fear I cannot make them plain to any one 
 else." 
 
 " What I have thought," said Prima, " is that all 
 these things which relate to household service, up 
 stairs, down stairs, and in my lady s chamber, fall 
 directly into the line of object teaching, and ought to 
 be taught, in that way, and first of all, to children, so 
 as to give the benefit of the teaching in their homes, 
 or half-homes, and to get their hands in. Then, 
 if they go out to service, they can pursue the study, 
 regularly, to fit them for their work, and if they do 
 not, they will know something of house manage 
 ment, and be able to have a certain sense of order 
 and arrangement, which, as you have always said, 
 comes by training and not by nature. Now, of 
 course, we cannot expect to see schools started and 
 equipped, all at once, for these studies, but is it not 
 a good end to aim at, and a field of instruction 
 sooner or later, to be occupied ? And why is it not a 
 philanthropic thing, because it would not only help 
 employers, but help working people, if their wives 
 and daughters had the skill to make their dwellings, 
 or their rooms, less dreary and more attractive, by 
 appetizing meals, however humble, and by cleanly, 
 orderly service., however rude? 
 
A BAD N. I MI-.. 
 
 57 
 
 41 1 think that is all right and sound, Prima," said 
 the Princess, " I would encourage everything in 
 the way of teaching, and, as you say, it is essentially 
 object teaching, like the instruction in a laboratory. 
 I think every one who attempts this kind of experi 
 mental teaching is a benefactor or a benefactress, 
 for the teacher, I believe, is almost always a woman ; 
 but the difficulty with such instruction, however val 
 uable, so far as Domesticus is concerned, is that 
 his followers have never learned the art of learning, 
 and that is the first and great need. They cannot 
 grasp the thing they are taught, and keep it, or make 
 it their own. And, in general, they do not want to, 
 and won t, and there is the end. My dear Prima, 
 you must catch Domesticus young, very young, to 
 teach him anything. But your plan, of beginning 
 with the children, I like, and there is good in it, to 
 be attempted, if not to be actually accomplished." 
 
 " I am happy," said Prima, " that you agree with 
 me. I do not claim any originality in my ideas ; 
 they have come from what I have read and heard 
 of other people s doings and efforts, as much as 
 from my own reflections, though, to be fair to 
 myself, the thought was my own, before I found that 
 it was, quite largely, the thought of others. This, 
 I believe is, often, the vindication of the usefulness 
 of an idea, that it enters more minds than one at 
 once. What I want most to know is whether I can 
 do anything myself, in my small way, to help for 
 ward the good cause. I can do nothing without 
 you." 
 
I $$ DOMESTJCUS. 
 
 " I am with you, heart and soul," said the Prin 
 cess. " Only let us get through this dreadful strife 
 of the Sisterhood, and have peace, if it is ever to 
 come ; and then we will work together in this wide 
 field, even if we can cultivate only a little corner of 
 it. I promise you I will help, in every way I can, 
 in laying the foundation for teaching the untaught 
 art of household service." 
 
 The Little Lady never in all her life made a 
 promise which she did not fully keep. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A CATASTROPHE. 
 
 THUNDERBOLTS in clear skies were not in 
 frequent in the Imperial City. There were 
 spirits in the air which kept it full of explosive 
 elements, and which, like the great Destroyer, loved 
 to launch their bolts at shining marks. And yet, 
 the sudden crash which so often startled the com 
 munity was very apt to be merely the deferred 
 result of causes which had been working, slowly 
 and surely, to the inevitable catastrophe. The un 
 expected happens only to the unexpectant. The 
 wise men, who had grown gray in casting financial 
 horoscopes, the soothsayers of the money circles, 
 who could discern, on the dilated edge of overtrad 
 ing, or in the distended bubble of speculation, the 
 signs of impending collapse, could often foresee and 
 foretell the calamities which took the unwary by 
 surprise. 
 
 The wise men and the soothsayers had, from the 
 beginning of the war, predicted the downfall of the 
 Prince and his princely house. Their vastly ex 
 tended dealings on the nether side of the invisible 
 line seemed to make this a foregone conclusion. 
 Their debtors in that wide region were turned, all 
 
!6o DOMESTICUS. 
 
 at once, into foreign belligerents, without means to 
 meet their obligations, if they had any longer the 
 desire to do so, and with their debts all cancelled by 
 the first cannonade. 
 
 The Prince ought to have succumbed at once. He 
 should have done, as others did who were in similar 
 plight, and who made no effort to fight against fate, 
 or to stand up under the crushing weight of a 
 fratricidal strife. But the Prince thought he was 
 solvent, whatever might be the outcome of the war. 
 He had large resources, not involved in his business. 
 He had bought and paid for a tract of land, within the 
 limits of the Imperial City, which he owned in his 
 own right, burdened with no debt, and which, of itself, 
 he thought, was a guaranty of fortune, although, 
 being almost wholly unimproved, it yielded no 
 return. He owned the palace which was his home, 
 and the great gains of his principality had always 
 seemed sufficient to make adversity impossible. 
 
 Besides, he hugged and cherished the delusion that 
 the war cloud would soon blow over. He could not 
 bring himself to believe that when the Sisterhood 
 found itself really arrayed in arms, and divided 
 against itself, in hostile camps and with opposing 
 hosts, the deadly feud would be forced to the issue 
 of mortal combat. Surely, there would be some 
 other way than war, and if war came, it might be 
 only a brush, a drawing of fire, enough fighting to 
 show that there were brave men on both sides, 
 and no cowards on either ; then the fraternal em 
 brace, and the pipe of peace, and a new welding 
 
./ 
 
 of the bonds of union, or an amicable separation 
 and a treaty between two separate sovereignties. 
 
 Gin-in- t - these false hopes, he strained every 
 nerve to maintain his credit and to meet all his 
 obligations, and having powerful friends and allies 
 beyond the sea, who had great faith in the Prince s 
 ability, and were in full sympathy with his mis 
 taken ideas, he was able, without selling his lands, 
 or even raising money upon them which might 
 have injured his standing at home to carry a brave 
 exterior, to maintain himself as aforetime, and to 
 seem to be outriding the storm. 
 
 All at once, and with little premonition, his 
 foreign props failed him. New complications had 
 arisen. The death of the chief of a great house, 
 his principal ally, made necessary the liquidation of 
 its affairs, and the supports he had leaned upon and 
 trusted gave way of a sudden. He was forced to 
 meet, immediately, an overwhelming amount of 
 debt, which all his means were insufficient to dis 
 charge. Failure was now inevitable. Rumors flew 
 thick and fast, and were soon followed by the truth 
 ful statement, heralded throughout the Imperial 
 City, that the Prince had suspended payment, the 
 mildest form of expression, known to the vernacular 
 of the commercial world, to indicate financial ruin. 
 
 The Prince met the blow with such fortitude as 
 he could summon. One thing he determined at the 
 outset of his new and hard experience as an insol 
 vent. All the men whom he owed should fare alike. 
 He would not prefer one to another. All he had 
 ii 
 
!6 2 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 should go, equally, to all to whom he was indebted. 
 This, he was sure, was right. Then he winced at 
 the thought that he had wholly failed to make any 
 provision, when he might have made it, for such an 
 emergency as this. Years ago, when he was in the 
 fullest tide of prosperity, when he gave in charity 
 or spent in luxury, in a single twelvemonth, what 
 would now, in his altered state, be almost a compe 
 tency, why had he not given the palace to the 
 Princess, or made some liberal provision for her, as 
 he might properly have done ? He had never 
 dreamed of this hideous extremity, and now it was 
 too late. 
 
 Even the furniture in his house, while it was all 
 bought and added to, with lavish generosity, for 
 her use and enjoyment, he had never formally 
 made over to her, and, aside from the jewels, and 
 trinkets, and wardrobe, which she had in her per 
 sonal control, and a few scattered articles in the 
 palace, he knew not if there was anything she could 
 call her own. She had no patrimony, her father 
 having, like so many of the citizens of the Imperial 
 City, lived in luxury while his business prospered, 
 but on such a scale that, when he died, its liquidation 
 left only a scant residuum. The Prince had been 
 equally foolish. All that had been his was now 
 only a fund for the payment of his debts. His 
 whole estate must go, at once, into some safe hand, 
 for equal distribution among all the creditors. 
 Already, and before the ink was dry on the parch 
 ment which provided for this transfer, one sharpest 
 
A r.tT.-isTKornr.. 
 
 163 
 
 money dealer had sued out a summary writ, to 
 enforce payment of a dishonored draft, and he was 
 made to feel that, in every way, he was tied, hand 
 and foot, with all the disabilities and disadvantages 
 of a debtor. 
 
 I Ie dreaded to go to his own home. The Princess 
 knew that there was difficulty and danger, but he 
 had never been willing to admit to himself, much 
 less to her, the possibility of such an ending as this. 
 Not until the morning of the fatal day, when, like 
 the swift-footed messengers who heaped their suc 
 cessive burdens of evil tidings upon the patriarch 
 of Ux, the post and the electric current brought 
 him the final and fatal missives which wrought his 
 
 o 
 
 ruin, had he permitted the thought of failure. When 
 he saw it could not be averted, lu had sent for the 
 jurisconsults, and in an hour s time, their ready arts 
 had stripped him, with his own free will, of all he 
 possessed, and converted him from a Merchant 
 Prince into a pauper. So, at least, he said bitterly 
 to himself, for, at this moment of his downfall, he 
 felt as if he had nothing left from the past and 
 nothing to look forward to in the future. 
 
 He waited until all the formalities were concluded 
 which perfected the transfer of his many properties 
 from himself to one Assignatus, the chosen custo 
 dian for the benefit of all his creditors, and then, 
 with a heavy heart, made his way homeward. 
 
 He crossed the threshold of his palace his no 
 longer and went straight, as his custom was, to the 
 apartment of the Princess, where he had always been 
 
j 64 D OMESTICUS. 
 
 sure of a smile and a welcome, whatever storms 
 might be raging without. 
 
 He had prepared no phrases in which to set 
 before her the calamity that had befallen him. He 
 could hardly, in his own thoughts, grasp its fearful 
 meaning, much less clothe it in words. What filled 
 him \vith alarm and terror was the apprehension 
 of the effect the evil tidings might have on her. He 
 thought she would be crushed to the earth ; she 
 might be struck senseless and speechless ; she might 
 die, and then what should he do ? But he could 
 not keep away from her, and when he came into her 
 sight, with a tottering step for he was almost pros 
 trated by the strain to which he had been subjected 
 during those long morning hours and with a 
 haggard face, w r hich told the whole sad story, before 
 he had uttered the broken words of which 
 " ruined " was all she caught, he was in her em 
 brace, and she was ready with all the aid and 
 comfort a loving heart could give. 
 
 " I feared it would come to this," she said, softly, 
 as she made him sit beside her, with his hand in 
 hers, " and now, dearest, I hope it may not be as bad 
 as you have dreaded." 
 
 The Princess had not been crushed to the earth, 
 nor struck speechless, nor was she going to die. 
 The Prince s fears for her relieved, turned upon him 
 self again. 
 
 "It is as bad as can be. I have lost every 
 thing." 
 
 " Not your good name, I am sure ; not your wife, 
 
A CATASTROPHE. 165 
 
 for she is beside you ; not your children, for they 
 are all safe at home." 
 
 " They will be beggars," said the Prince. 
 
 " Not while we have strength to do a day s work 
 for them, or they for us." 
 
 " You must give up your chariots and horses," 
 said the Prince. 
 
 " It will do us all good to walk." 
 
 " We must quit the palace." 
 
 " We can be just as happy in a smaller house, and 
 with far less care." 
 
 " You will have to do your own housework." 
 
 " It will be a real pleasure. We shall have a final 
 riddance of Domesticus." 
 
 " You will have a broken-down husband on your 
 hands." 
 
 " It will be the sweetest duty of my life to care 
 for him." 
 
 " You will be expelled from the circle of Soci- 
 etas." 
 
 " We shall have the inner and more sacred circle 
 of home." 
 
 " I shall no longer be a Prince." 
 
 " Then you will be an ex-Prince," and the Little 
 Lady burst into laughter, for it had always seemed 
 to her, when the Prince introduced her to ex- 
 Consuls, ex-Praetors and ex-Ediles, a most ridicu 
 lous thing that the more a man was out of office, 
 the more he held on to any title that had ever 
 belonged to it, as to a kind of perpetual perqi;: 
 
 Her laughter wao always contagious, and the 
 
1 66 & OMESTICUS. 
 
 Prince could hardly help responding with a smile, 
 but he clung to the dismal shadow which he 
 brought with him into the palace, and he was begin 
 ning to feel a little disappointed that the Princess 
 was not enveloped in its black folds as completely 
 as he was himself. 
 
 " You really do not seem to care very much for 
 my misfortunes," he said. 
 
 " It is because I care for you, so very much more 
 than for all else, good fortune, bad fortune, or any 
 thing in the whole world," she said, drawing him 
 still nearer to her, " that I will not be made sad while 
 you and the children are left to me. Wherever we 
 are all together, there will be home, and happiness, 
 whether we have much or little." 
 
 Then they sat in silence, for some time. 
 
 " You are braver than I," said the Prince, at last, 
 " and I am only too thankful you are not made 
 wretched by this miserable business. Up to last 
 night, I hoped to get through; even this morning, I 
 had offers of help which might possibly have tided 
 us along, perhaps saved us, but the prospect was 
 too gloomy. I have done all I could. Only I 
 reproach myself for not having made provision for 
 you, as I ought to have done. I should have put 
 the palace in your name, years ago. I never antici 
 pated such a time as this. Even the furniture I 
 never made over to you. I suppose, now, every 
 thing will have to go to the creditors." 
 
 And the Prince looked gloomily around, as if 
 apprehensive that some of them were waiting, in 
 
A CATASTROPHE. t 6/ 
 
 the second-story hall, to carry off the sofa on which 
 he and the Princess were sitting, in their sorrow. 
 
 " No matter for that," said she in a cheery tone. 
 " We shall not want much, and you will be sur 
 prised to see how I can make a very little go a great 
 ways. At all events, I am not going to be miser 
 able and disconsolate, until there is positively noth 
 ing else to be done." 
 
 " You are sure you are not putting all this on, 
 just to keep me up," said the poor Prince, still 
 clinging to the shadow. 
 
 " Perfectly sure," said the Princess, rising and 
 standing before him, her whole presence taking on 
 an air of dignity he had never seen so marked before, 
 " I am as honest in this as I have always been, in 
 everything. Did I not take you for richer or 
 poorer, and of what use am I, if, when poverty 
 comes, I cannot help you bear it ? I do not care 
 how bad things may be. Your home shall always 
 be happy, if my heart and hands can make it so. 
 All I ask is your love, to make my labor light." 
 
 " That shall never fail you," said the Prince, 
 rising in his turn, and clasping her in his arms, 
 " only I can not forgive myself for my own folly and 
 want of foresight. And what a sad change for 
 Prima and Juventus." 
 
 " It may be the best thing in the world for both 
 of them," said the Princess, and the Prince rinding 
 it was quite impossible to break down her good 
 spirits yielded himself to her gentle ministrations, 
 and to her efforts to change the current of his 
 
X 68 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 thoughts into the quiet channel of customary things. 
 Prima and the children were soon about him, with 
 their bright faces, and before bed time lie was dis 
 posed to take such comfort as he could in their 
 cheerful companionship, and as a last resource would 
 fain console himself with the traditional saying of 
 one of the wisest, and the wealthiest, of the old- 
 time millionaires of the Imperial City, that all he 
 could ever get for himself out of his fortune was 
 three meals a day, and a night s lodging. 
 
 In fact, the tragical disclosure of the Prince had 
 not come upon the Little Lady entirely without 
 foreboding on her part. She had noted his anxi 
 eties, and he had plainly enough expressed his 
 apprehensions of trouble, although in so vague a 
 way as not to excite immediate alarm. She had, 
 however, nerved herself for disaster, should it come, 
 and now that the storm had burst, she felt strong 
 enough to brave its fury. In the depth of her heart 
 was a sense of conscious courage to grapple with 
 adverse fortune, as bravely as when she fought her 
 battle with Domesticus, and there was a source of 
 satisfaction in feeling that she could be, more than 
 ever, sovereign in her own sphere when circum 
 scribed and contracted by necessity ; for she well 
 knew that the comforts and luxuries of life are rarely 
 relinquished from choice. 
 
 The revelation of the Prince also explained a 
 mysterious occurrence of the morning, which she 
 had awaited his coming to elucidate, but now she 
 was satisfied, without clearly understanding it any 
 
A CATASTROPHE. \(^ 
 
 better, that it had reference to the catastrophe he 
 announced, and she did not trouble him with any 
 questions. She had been away from home most of 
 the day, on a visit to a friend, who was ill, and at 
 whose bedside she was kept for several hours. On 
 her return, Patella had come, in considerable excite 
 ment, to tell her that two men who called themselves 
 deputy-somethings, she could not remember what, 
 had come to the palace, insisted on entering, made 
 themselves very free indeed, and said they had put a 
 levy on the furniture, and it covered the whole of it; 
 but after they had gone away she looked all over 
 the furniture, and could not find a scrap of new 
 covering, or anything else on it. She was sure they 
 said " levy," because they said it over and over a 
 great many times. 
 
 The Princess had heard of levying war, and levy 
 ing taxes, but she had never heard of a levy on furni 
 ture, and thought Patella must have made a mistake. 
 
 " What kind of men were they ?" 
 
 Patella said they were very polite and gentle 
 manly, but looked- as if they were a kind it would 
 be safer to keep out of a house, before they got into 
 it, than to try to put out, after they were once in. 
 
 This was rather vague, in the way of description, 
 but it had to suffice, and the Princess could only 
 wait until evening and then she kept silence, lest 
 the Prince s trouble should be made greater. He 
 had said the furniture must all go to the creditors, 
 and she could not see that it mattered whether it 
 went with a levy on it, or just as it was. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG OF DOWER, 
 
 IT seemed a strange thing to the Prince that, for 
 the first time in many weeks, he should enjoy a 
 long and unbroken rest during the night which fol 
 lowed the day of his failure. He had retired early, 
 and did not wake until long after his accustomed 
 hour for rising. The sleep which care had driven 
 from his pillow, while he thought and planned to 
 keep his property, came back, with healing in its 
 wings, as soon as he had lost it. He woke with 
 that vague sense of unreality which will often 
 possess the brain after a long, sound slumber, and 
 it was some time before he could recall the con 
 sciousness of his impoverished condition, which was 
 now to abide with him in all his waking hours. 
 
 He found the Princess and Prima at the breakfast 
 table, the younger children having gone already to 
 their daily tasks at school. He was greeted with 
 unusual warmth and cheerfulness. 
 
 " Here are many kind words from old friends," 
 said the Princess, handing him some missives she 
 had received, expressing regrets and sympathies for 
 the sudden misfortunes of the Prince, " and Gloriosa 
 has written to Prima that the gates of Societas are 
 170 
 
RIGHT A XD WRONG OF DOWER. ^ 
 
 not to be closed upon her, without due notice, and 
 proposing to take her to the seashore, or some 
 where, for the Summer, so that she may have plenty 
 of gayety to distract her mind, and keep it from 
 dwelling too much on Juventus, in his perils, or on 
 you, in your anxieties." 
 
 "She is a frivolous woman," said the Prince, sen- 
 tentiously. 
 
 " Hut she has a good heart under all her frivolity," 
 said the Princess, "and she really loves Prima." 
 
 "There is no question about that," said Prima, 
 "and her invitation is just as kindly intended as it 
 is absolutely out of place, and beyond acceptance. 
 I will write and decline it." 
 
 "And give her my love," said the Princess. 
 
 "And mine, I suppose," said the Prince, who was 
 becoming more amiable, as he sipped his coffee and 
 began on a second chop, somewhat surprised to find 
 that everything had not lost its flavor, and become 
 absolutely noxious to sight and sense. 
 
 " Father Vindex is waiting to see you," said the 
 Princess, " he has stopped, on his way to his busi 
 ness, and was very glad to hear you were resting. 
 He said he had plenty of time, and you were to 
 finish your breakfast." 
 
 Vindex, to whom the Princess gave the title of 
 Father, on account of his age and the respect in which 
 he was held, was a gray-headed and long-headed 
 jurisconsult, versed in all the learning of the law 
 and its intricate methods. The Prince had long 
 been on terms of friendly intimacy with him, and 
 
DO ME STIC US. 
 
 often counseled with him in .various matters of im 
 portance ; in the present emergency he had been 
 called in only at the moment when the crisis had 
 arrived, and when immediate action was required. 
 He had then but little opportunity of talking with 
 the Prince about his affairs, and hence his early visit 
 at the palace. 
 
 He went at once to the topic of which their 
 thoughts were full. 
 
 " My good friend," he said, taking the Prince by 
 the hand, "you had a hard day, yesterday, but things 
 will come out all right in the end." 
 
 The Prince shook his head mournfully, and abso 
 lutely refused to be comforted by any such smooth 
 prophecy. 
 
 " We shall see," said Vindex, " in the meantime, 
 it is very fortunate that there is a ready way of 
 making good provision for your wife and children." 
 
 "How is that? "asked the Prince, "this is my 
 greatest regret, that I neglected to make provision 
 myself, when I had it in my power." 
 
 " You stand all the better with the creditors for 
 not having done so. They are all friendly, except 
 that pestilent fellow, Furax, and we have got the 
 better of him, in spite of his writ and levy. I found 
 so many flaws to be picked in his proceedings, that 
 he was frightened at his own temerity, and was glad 
 to take half the sum owing him, in cash, and turn 
 over his claim and suit to me. I shall thus control 
 the first judgment against your property and the 
 levy on your furniture, which it is a capital good 
 
RIGHT A .YD I VR ONG OF DOll I-. R. 
 
 73 
 
 to have. This was all done last night, and 
 well done. Mind, I did not take it to myself, and I 
 have made a condition that any proceedings shall 
 be in the name of Furux." 
 
 " But if you paid half the debt, where did you 
 find the money. I had none and " 
 
 "Oh, I had a few thousand idle sestcrtia and they 
 may as well be used in this way as in any other, 
 and better. Besides, don t you see I am your first 
 judgment creditor, ahead of every one else, and 
 what better security can I have?" 
 
 "Very well," said the Prince, " I thank you, most 
 sincerely, for this and all your kindness, but, Vindex, 
 what did you mean by there being provision for 
 the Princess?" 
 
 "I mean just this. All your lands are entirely 
 free of debt, thank fortune, and being clear, your 
 wife has a right of dower in them, worth enough 
 to provide for her handsomely. Assignatus, to 
 whom you conveyed them, yesterday, in trust for 
 your creditors, cannot make sale of a square inch of 
 them, because no one would take the title without 
 a release of her dower right by the Princess, and 
 for that the creditors must pay her its full value." 
 
 " I always supposed," said the Prince, " that a wife s 
 right of dower was something she did not come 
 into till her husband died. I can see that if I died 
 it would be worth a good deal, but I am not dead 
 yet, though this trouble may kill me very soon." 
 
 "It will help to keep you alive" said the old 
 jurisconsult, " because it will give a new train to your 
 
1 74 D OMES TIC US. 
 
 thoughts, and a new impulse to your activities. 
 Now about the right of dower. That is perfectly 
 plain. The moment the wedding ring is on the 
 wife s finger, and the knot tied, she is endowed of all 
 her husband s lands. This is a property right, which 
 she cannot be deprived of, without her own consent, 
 so long as she continues his wife. In case of his 
 death, the right becomes absolute, and then she is 
 entitled to one-third, for life, of the rents of the lands 
 or, if she choose, she may have one-third of the 
 lands set off to her, under the direction of the court, 
 and hold them as long as she lives. This is what 
 we call admeasuring her dower. While the hus 
 band is living, of course, the wife s right of dower is 
 contingent inchoate/ as the law calls it." 
 
 "Why not call it something a little more unintel 
 ligible ? " said the Prince. " The jargon of the law is 
 the stiangest thing imaginable. I believe it is part 
 of your stock in trade." 
 
 " Of course it is ; what would any science be with 
 out its technical nomenclature. Inchoate means 
 primarily, in a chaotic state, and nothing can be more 
 without form or fixed conditions than a wife s dower 
 right, as long as her husband is living, and nobody 
 can foretell which of the two will outlive the other." 
 
 " How then can such a right have any value ? It 
 must be mere guess work." 
 
 "It is. And so the law guesses at it, and has 
 adopted a table of values of the contingent right, 
 according to the age of the wife." 
 
 "Then, when I signed the parchment, yesterday, 
 
RIGHT A. A7> WRONG OF DOll l-.R. 
 
 75 
 
 Assignatus did not get a clear title for the benefit 
 of the creditors. It was subject to this contingent 
 right, as you call it, of the Princess." 
 
 "Just so and rightfully, because, although con 
 tingent, it is property, and she must be paid for it. 
 Your case is very unusual. Ordinarily a man mort 
 gages his lands, if he has any, before he fails, and 
 his wife joins in the mortgage and releases her 
 dower. But your lands are clear of debt and the 
 dower right is intact. The creditors understand 
 this and have already made overtures to pay ; in 
 fact, I think that we can get between fifty thousand 
 and one hundred thousand sestertia for it. They 
 must pay more than the value by the tables, because 
 they cannot compel a release." 
 
 The Prince was silent for a few minutes. At last 
 he said, 
 
 " Vindex, I do not believe the Princess will take 
 the money." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because she will think it is not right. She will 
 be very firm in the idea that everything must go to 
 the creditors." 
 
 " Certainly, everything the law gives them. The 
 law does not give them the dower right. It belongs 
 to her." 
 
 " She will give them this besides," said the 
 Prince. 
 
 " Then she will be a very foolish woman," said 
 Vindex, " and she will simply throw away her prop 
 erty, at the very moment when she needs it most. 
 
I7 6 DOMESTICUS, 
 
 The dower right is hers, and she should make it 
 worth what it will bring." 
 
 " You must talk this matter over with the 
 Princess, yourself," said the Prince, " if you will wait, 
 I will send her to you, only I know very well how 
 it will end. The dower right will go to the creditors." 
 
 The Princess and Prima, while washing the break 
 fast things, with their own hands, were discussing 
 plans for the future ; a small house, in the upper part 
 of the island whereon the Imperial City was built, 
 stood on the lands belonging to the Prince, and was 
 available for the immediate occupation of the 
 family. The Princess was determined to quit the 
 palace, at once, and preparations for the removal 
 were, already, in progress. Fortunately, she had 
 pursued a system of unusual economy for some 
 months ; the bad name given to her by Domesticus 
 had made a kind of enforced interregnum in the 
 household service, and old Patella had been the 
 main-stay of the family. The Prince had been dis 
 inclined to having any company in the house, and 
 everything having favored retrenchment, the 
 Princess had been able to put by, out of the ample 
 provision the Prince always made for current wants, 
 a considerable sum, sufficient for all present needs. 
 As she was never in debt to any one, she was free 
 from obligations, and her savings came in oppor 
 tunely in the present distress. 
 
 She came, at the call of the Prince, and he left 
 her alone with the old jurisconsult. He could 
 hardly tell why, but he did not care to be present 
 
RIGHT AX D U RONG OF DOWER. ,-~ 
 
 at the interview, and he thought he knew how it 
 would end. 
 
 The wily advocate was as shrewd in his sym 
 pathies as he was in the more ordinary and active 
 duties of his calling. He saw, at once, that the 
 little lady expected and desired no condolence, or 
 tear-drops ; and after the customary salutations, he 
 purposely began, in a blunt way, 
 
 " I hear you intend quitting these premises at 
 once." 
 
 " As soon as possible," said the Princess. " I 
 suppose we are in no danger of being turned out, 
 for a day or two." 
 
 " You can stay just as long as you choose. It is 
 out of the question to rent a palace like this, at the 
 present time. The summer, which is just at hand, 
 is the wrong season. A bill may be posted in front, 
 but until a tenant is found, it is better you should 
 remain in possession, and care for the property. 
 Besides, an occupied house always rents better than 
 a vacant one." 
 
 " I prefer to go," said the Princess. " Our old 
 servant, Patella, will care for everything, and we 
 shall avoid the expense of keeping up a large 
 establishment. And if it cannot be leased, perhaps 
 it can be sold." 
 
 " No," said Vindex, seizing the first opportunity 
 of introducing the subject he wanted to discuss. 
 " Neither the palace, nor any of the Prince s lands 
 can be sold, as yet, so as to give a clear title, and no 
 one will buy them without a clear title." 
 
 12 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 " Why not ? " asked the Princess, in some alarm. 
 " Has he not a good title ? Surely he came by them 
 all honestly." 
 
 " Yes, a good title, but I said a clear title. You 
 have a right of dower in all the Prince s lands, 
 It is a charge upon them, and without your release 
 of that dower right, the title is not marketable. No 
 one wants to buy property with a right of dower 
 outstanding." 
 
 " I suppose," said the Princess, " that is why 1 
 have had to sign the parchment whenever the 
 Prince sold any land, and say yes/ to something a 
 young man would mumble over to me, after I 
 signed." 
 
 " Yes, that is just the reason, and whenever you 
 joined with your husband in signing, that act cut off 
 your right of dower, but none of these lands have 
 been sold, and so your dower right remains your 
 property, and the creditors will pay you a good 
 round sum to release it." 
 
 " But I never was paid a round sum, or a square 
 sum, or any kind of a sum, when I used to sign 
 with the Prince." 
 
 " That was because he got the purchase money, 
 and you got your share r in support and mainte 
 nance, for which the Prince paid, but now he gets 
 nothing ; he simply transfers his property to pay his 
 debts, and so you ought to be paid for your release 
 of dower." 
 
 " Who is to pay me ? " 
 
 " The person to whom the Prince conveyed all 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG OF DOWER. 
 
 his properties yesterday, for the equal benefit of all 
 his creditors." 
 
 " \Vlio is that person ? " 
 
 "Assignatus, I presume you know him." 
 
 " I know him very well," said the Princess. " He 
 was married the same week with the Prince and 
 myself. His eldest daughter is just two days older 
 than Prima, no, let me see, Prima is two days older 
 than she well, I am not quite sure which it is." 
 
 " Anyway," said Vindex, " he is an excellent man, 
 and the creditors have perfect confidence in him. 
 All that remains is for them to fix the sum they are 
 willing to pay you, and for you to agree to it. The 
 amount will be at least fifty thousand sestertia ; they 
 will furnish this to Assignatus, and he will pay you, 
 and it will make a good provision for your wants." 
 
 " Why cannot I have it in land," said the Princess. 
 " I remember now, since you began to speak about 
 this, that the Princess Vidua had a house given her, 
 and she told me it was admeasured to her for dower. 
 It was over twenty-five feet front, and had land on 
 both sides of it. I suppose that is why they 
 measured it." 
 
 " That was different. Her husband was dead. 
 The wife gets none of the land, or the rents, until 
 after the husband s death." 
 
 " Then has the Prince got to die, before this right 
 is of any value? Is all this on the idea that he is 
 going to die ? It is perfectly dreadful ! I don t 
 want to talk about it, or think about it. It is posi 
 tively cruel ! " 
 
DO ME STIC US. 
 
 " You don t quite understand/ said Vindex, " the 
 wife does not, to be sure, come into the full enjoy 
 ment of her dower right till her husband dies " 
 
 " But I could not enjoy anything, if the Prince 
 were to die why do you talk to me in this way ? 
 Isn t it bad enough for my poor husband to fail, 
 without calculating on his death ? Indeed I do not 
 understand it at all, and I don t want to understand 
 it, if this is what it means." 
 
 " My dear lady," said Vindex who, perceiving 
 that the flood-gates of feeling were in danger of 
 giving way, and of all reason and common sense 
 being swept out of reach and sight, paused for a 
 moment, and then resumed on a new basis, " I am 
 delighted to see the Prince looking as well as he 
 does this morning, and I am sure, before long, he 
 will see many things to encourage him. He is not 
 likely to suffer in health, or in spirits, permanently, 
 and what I am suggesting to you has no reference 
 whatever to his death. It is simply a matter of 
 business, and I will not trouble you any further with 
 it, if it is distasteful to you. I had not finished 
 explaining what it really was." 
 
 " Pardon me," said the Princess, " if I interrupted 
 you ; I will promise to listen; only you frightened 
 me dreadfully in saying what you did. Now, go 
 on, please." 
 
 " What I wanted to say was that you have and 
 own, at the present time, a right of dower in all the 
 lands of the Prince. The law of the land gives it to 
 you. It is yours, and no one s else. It is worth a 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG OF DOWER. jgi 
 
 large sum of money. Your husband has transferred 
 the lands to Assignatus, as a trustee, for the benefit of 
 his creditors. They are still subject to your dower 
 right, as a charge, because you did not join in the 
 deed to Assignatus, and unless the creditors can 
 have that charge removed, by procuring a release 
 of your dower right, from yourself, to the trustee, 
 they cannot sell the lands free and clear of it. 
 Therefore, they want to pay you a sum of money 
 and have you release your right, in consideration 
 of that payment." 
 
 " I think I understand it now," said the Princess. 
 " If the mumbling young man had come here, yes 
 terday, and brought the parchment, by which the 
 Prince transferred the lands to Assignatus, and I 
 had signed it, and said, yes , when he said what 
 ever it is he says, then my dower right would have 
 been gone. Because I did not sign and say yes/ 
 I own it still, and the creditors want me to sign a 
 separate parchment, all by myself, to make it just the 
 same as if I had signed, yesterday, with the Prince." 
 
 " That is precisely the case ; you have put it as 
 clearly as possible," said Vindex, delighted to see 
 that the flood-gates were sound and tight, and that 
 reason and good sense were not swept away. 
 
 11 Then this dower right is mine, to keep or sell 
 as I please?" 
 
 " Unquestionably." 
 
 " And the money the creditors are willing to pay 
 for it will be in my hand, to do what I please with ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 " And when the creditors get the separate parch 
 ment from me, they will have all that the Prince, 
 or I, or both of us, together, could possibly give 
 them." 
 
 " That is so." 
 
 " Then please prepare the parchment and send 
 the young man, and I will sign it, and say yes , 
 and there will be an end. I will have none of their 
 money." 
 
 " But my dear Princess ! " 
 
 " Why should I ? If I had the price, in my hand, 
 I should pay it all back to them. If I had a mil 
 lion sestertia, I would give them, every one, to the 
 Prince, to help pay his just debts. Why should I 
 not do, to-day, what I would have done, yesterday, 
 without a word of question, or a thought of pay ? 
 It is quite too late for me to be setting a price for 
 signing my name." 
 
 " But," said Vindex, " you were never in this 
 plight before. It was all right for you to sign off, 
 without any price, so long as your husband was 
 selling the land in the ordinary course of dealing. 
 Now, since he has failed, it is very different." 
 
 "Am I to be better off because he has failed?" 
 asked the Princess. " It seems a very strange thing 
 that when a man fails, the first thing his creditors 
 must do is to pay his wife a great sum of money." 
 
 " No, you are not to be a bit better off. Before 
 the failure you had this property, and you have it 
 now, but the creditors are not your creditors, and 
 they have to deal with you separately ; before the 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG OF DOWER. jgj 
 
 failure there was, in effect, no separation of your 
 interest from your husband s." 
 
 " Then, instead of drawing us closer together, the 
 failure is going to separate us," said the Princess. 
 " Never, with my consent ! We have always been 
 one in prosperity, and we shall cling to one another 
 in adversity, and, I hope, always." 
 
 The flood-gates were loosening again and the 
 veteran practitioner began to fear that they would 
 certainly burst open, with ruinous consequences. 
 He tried another tack. 
 
 "You would prefer, then, not to receive anything 
 from the creditors for a release of your dower 
 right?" 
 
 " I will not take a single sestertium from them ; 
 not one." 
 
 "And of course," said the wily old advocate, " you 
 would not like to acknowledge having received any 
 sum, however small, from them ? " 
 
 " Of course not," said the Little Lady, walking 
 into the trap he laid for her, as innocently as ever a 
 fly was enticed into a spider s web. 
 
 "Then," said he, "you cannot possibly make the 
 dower right over to them, because the transfer would 
 not be good unless they paid something for it, or, at 
 least, you acknowledged having received some 
 thing." 
 
 " Why not ? I recollect when the Prince gave a 
 house and some land, in the country, to his sister, 
 she paid nothing, not the smallest sum, he told me 
 so, and I signed too." 
 
DO ME STIC US. 
 
 " Yes, because there the consideration was natural 
 love and affection, but that only applies between 
 relations, and besides, it is quite inconceivable, and 
 wholly unknown to the law, that any one should 
 entertain natural love and affection for his creditors." 
 
 The Little Lady thought she had natural love 
 and affection enough for the whole world, but to 
 love her husband s creditors as herself was some 
 thing of a strain, even upon the most amiable dis 
 position, and when she found that the consideration 
 of natural love and affection could only apply be 
 tween kindred, she was brought to a point where she 
 saw she had been too sweeping in her declaration 
 that she would not even acknowledge the receipt of 
 one sestertium, in exchange for her dower right. 
 
 This was all that Vindex wanted, for the moment. 
 He was too wise to provoke further controversy 
 with the Princess, and as he wished to gain time, he 
 preferred to retreat from the contest, in good order, 
 under cover of the obscurity he had succeeded in 
 throwing over the matter, on the question of con 
 sideration. 
 
 The Princess was a little nonplussed, and the 
 subject was dropped, apparently because neither 
 party to the conversation was in a position to press 
 the point on which they had respectively been per 
 sistent 
 
 " I want to ask you about the furniture," said the 
 Princess. " Ought it not to be sold next Fall ? It 
 will bring so much better prices then." 
 
 Vindex had his own secret intentions about the 
 
RIGHT A.\n /f AV.Vo OF DOWER. !$$ 
 
 furniture, which he meant to carry out, for the bene 
 fit of the Princess, at all hazards. He had planned 
 and determined that she should never leave the 
 palace ; that her dower right should provide all 
 present means of support ; that the furniture should 
 all be hers, in a way he nuant to work out; and that, 
 in the end, the Prince s debts should be compro 
 mised and here-in stated, if not in his fortune, at least 
 in a competency. He had found himself blocked 
 by the Princess, first, in her resolve to vacate the 
 palace, next, by her refusal to receive the value of 
 her dower right, and, now, she was suggesting 
 something which would be fatal to his hidden plans 
 on her behalf, in the matter of the furniture. But 
 here he felt he was master of the situation, and he 
 meant to carry things with a high hand. 
 
 "The furniture may have to be sold, under execu 
 tion, very soon under the first judgment and levy." 
 
 " But that will sacrifice it. It ought to bring a 
 very large sum. It is just as good as new, all of it. 
 It has had the Very best care ; then there are all the 
 pictures, and statues, and vases, and ornaments 
 they will surely sell best in the Fall." 
 
 " Images and gimcracks don t bring half their 
 value, at any time," said Vindex, "and as to old fur 
 niture, it is a drug in the market." 
 
 "Images, gimcracks, and old furniture!" Was 
 this all that the eye of the law could discern in the 
 treasures with which the palace of the Prince was 
 stored ? 
 
 The Little Lady was as indignant as Vindex 
 
!86 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 meant she should be at his brutal words. He well 
 knew that, next to the ties of nature, the attachment 
 of the female heart to the furniture around which 
 the associations of home and family have clustered, 
 is something which will cling to its object, like the 
 carving to a four-post bedstead. He felt for her, 
 but he was determined he would not be out-gener- 
 aled, this time, and his plan was a pet one, of his own 
 special devising, which he was bent on pursuing. 
 
 The Little Lady s wrath was great, but her lovely 
 temper checked its rising waves. She said, with 
 evident feeling and some dignity, 
 
 " You will pardon me for putting a higher value 
 than perhaps it deserves, on this part of the Prince s 
 property. My only wish is to have it go, as far as 
 may be, toward paying his debts. And pardon me 
 again, but I thought you said there was no neces 
 sity for our leaving the house, and if this is so, why 
 is there any fear of an immediate sale ? " 
 
 " But you say you will not remain in the house ; 
 and if you quit, the judgment creditor may come 
 and sell the furniture, at any time. He would very 
 likely wait, if you did not leave." It occurred to 
 Vindex that here was a string he might pull so as 
 to detain the Princess in the palace. But he was at 
 fault, for she replied, promptly ; 
 
 " No, that cannot be ; but why not induce the first 
 judgment creditor to wait, all the same; he will get 
 more by doing so. Who did you say he was ? 
 
 " He is, that is, he was yes, the name of the 
 creditor in the judgment is Furax, a very vindictive, 
 
RIGHT AND WRONG OF DOWER. \-j 
 
 grasping, difficult man to deal with; a kind of man 
 you would never want to meet, or know anything 
 about, or be under any obligation to." 
 
 " But surely you could induce him to delay, when 
 there is no object in his pushing matters." 
 
 " I don t think I have the slightest influence over 
 him," said Vindex, who was now a great deal more 
 anxious to end this interview with the Princess than 
 he had been to begin it. " You must prepare for 
 the worst in this matter, but, in the end, all will 
 come right, and now I must be going ; excuse my 
 detaining you so long, and kindly inform the Prince 
 that I am leaving, as I want a word with him before 
 I go." 
 
 The Princess knew that a professional man must 
 not be detained, and she was, herself, willing to have 
 a respite for reflection. As she left the room, the 
 Prince, who was in an adjoining apartment, entered, 
 and the moment he was alone with Vindex, he 
 asked, 
 
 "What success? Will the Princess accept any 
 thing for her dower right?" 
 
 " She does not want to. Woman-like, she has 
 put herself on a ground that does more credit to 
 her heart than her head. Fortunately, we are to 
 have a breathing spell, and I have some ideas out 
 of which good may come, without going counter 
 to her views. But, my dear Prince, you must 
 promise me one thing, and keep your promise, as 
 you hope for help in your need. Do not, for the 
 world, let the Princess know that I control, or have 
 
!38 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 anything to do with the judgment of Furax. This 
 is absolutely essential for her good, which, you 
 know, I have close at heart. As I told you, the 
 claim was not transferred to my name, and so you 
 do not know who owns it. She must not suspect 
 that I have the least interest in it. Give rne your 
 word on that." 
 
 " I think you are entitled to claim this of me," 
 said the Prince, "so I promise as you ask." 
 
 "Very good," said the jurisconsult, and he went 
 his way to his clients. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 LEAVING HOME. 
 
 Little Lady looked back on her interview 
 1. with the sagacious Vindex with a sense of 
 discomfort. In spite of his lucid explanation of the 
 law of dower, and her clear comprehension of it at 
 the time, she found some difficulty, in the retrospect, 
 in keeping the matter clearly before her mind. She 
 appealed to the Prince for a solution of her doubts, 
 and they discussed the whole subject, according to 
 the light they had, which, being all borrowed from 
 the instructions they had received separately from 
 the same source, was serviceable only so far as its 
 reflected rays were coincident. 
 
 " I cannot see," said the Princess, " how Vindex 
 could expect to make me believe that your creditors 
 would pay me a large sum of money for something 
 I have not got, and may never have, and that I 
 never expect to have; because you know, dearest, 
 I want to die first and I know I shall. He says it 
 is property; but I cannot divine how a thing is 
 property one hasn t got. My linen, and my camel s 
 hair shawl, and my laces, and the jewelry you have 
 given me, are mine, and I will go to prison before 
 I will give them up, because your creditors have 
 
 189 
 
DOMEST1CUS. 
 
 nothing to do with them. Why, there is my mother s 
 silver tea-service, marked with my name, which, if 
 Prima should marry and have a daughter, and she 
 should be named for me, would belong to her, right 
 off, to be hers when I die; that is what I call property. 
 But how can you own a thing when it is all guess 
 work whether you will live long enough to have it ? " 
 
 "As I understand it," said the Prince, "it is the 
 contingency that is valued, on the doctrine of 
 chances." 
 
 "Then it is nothing more nor less than a lottery," 
 said the Princess ; " it is dealing in a chance, and a 
 chance in your own husband s life. I felt it was 
 something dreadful all the time. How these juris 
 consults, as they call themselves, can twist and 
 turn things ! I thought all lotteries were prohibited 
 by law." 
 
 " I suppose," said the Prince, " that what the law 
 allows can hardly be illegal. Vindex says the court 
 has tables which fix the value. Now, if your 
 contingent dower right is something which the law 
 recognizes, and if it lies on the land, like a mortgage, 
 and the creditors want to lift it off, and are willing 
 to pay to get rid of it, I should say it was all right 
 for them to offer and for you to take the money." 
 
 " It may be perfectly right, as you say," said the 
 Princess, " for them to offer to pay, but I cannot feel 
 that it would be right for me to take their money 
 and keep it. If I were to pick up so much money 
 in the street, even if the law said I could have it, I 
 should want to find the owner, for all that; and 
 
LEAVING HOME. igi 
 
 if I couldn t find the owner, and had to keep it, I 
 should want to give it to you, to help pay your 
 debts. One thing is certain, Viiulcx may be a great 
 jurist on dower rights and contingencies, but he 
 knows nothing about furniture or pictures, and I 
 am afraid he is a very heartless man." 
 
 " He is as good and true a friend as we have in the 
 world," said the Prince. " I dare say he is not very 
 well posted in upholstery or the fine arts. He is 
 an old bachelor and belongs to the kind that is 
 satisfied with the mahogany and hair-cloth of a past 
 generation." 
 
 " But think of his being willing to have all the 
 furniture in this house sold in mid-summer ! It 
 will be thrown away. What ought the things, all 
 taken together, to bring ? I will go to work with 
 Prima, to-morrow morning, and make a complete 
 list of everything, with prices, and send it to Vindcx. 
 It may open his old eyes to their value. Why, the 
 set in our bedroom alone ought to bring nearly as 
 much as it cost ; it ought to go very high." 
 
 " If it could be sold by weight, it would," said the 
 Prince. " It weighs several tons." 
 
 " It is all splendid solid rosewood," said the 
 Princess, "just as different as possible from the glued- 
 together, flimsy things they make nowadays. I hate 
 waste. If Vindex does not prevent this sale taking 
 place at this season, he is no friend of mine. And 
 who is this Furax whom he says is so fierce? Do 
 you know him ? " 
 
 " Only by name. He is a man who buys notes 
 
I 9 2 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 and drafts, and he had some of ours. You had 
 much better leave all this entirely to Vindex. If the 
 furniture should bring all it cost, it would be only a 
 drop in the bucket, just now. Vindex will take care 
 of everything." 
 
 " I am almost afraid of him," said the Princess. 
 " No, I am not afraid of anybody, so long as I am 
 doing right, not even of Furax ; and if need be, I 
 will find him out and get him to postpone the sale, 
 and save the furniture from sacrifice." 
 
 This was an alarming suggestion, and the Prince 
 made haste to change the subject, inwardly resolving 
 to acquaint Vindex, at the earliest moment, with the 
 apprehensions and the intentions of the Princess. 
 
 In the meantime, the preparations for the exodus 
 from the palace went on apace. In a few days the 
 Princess was ready to leave with all the articles 
 which she determined, after deciding every doubtful 
 case against herself, she had a right to carry away 
 with her, as her special property, or that of her 
 children. The long list of the furniture and other 
 things, she prepared with Prima s aid, and dis 
 patched to Vindex, according to the declaration 
 made to the Prince, and by him communicated to 
 the old jurisconsult, who, somewhat to the Prince s 
 surprise, said it was just what he wanted to have. 
 
 When the morning arrived which the Princess 
 had fixed for her departure, after giving some final 
 instructions to Patella, as she sat by herself in the 
 room she had so long loved to call her own, and 
 felt, more than anything else, a kind of surprise at 
 
LEAVING HOME. 
 
 93 
 
 her own courage in the moment of bidding it fare 
 well, Prima came in and said that the old servant 
 was outside and desired to speak to her for a mo 
 ment. 
 
 "What does Patella want, Prima? I spent an 
 hour with her after breakfast, down stairs, giving 
 her all the directions about everything." 
 
 " Yes, but since then she has dressed herself and 
 gone out, and now she has come back, and says she 
 has a great favor to ask of you." 
 
 " I hardly know what favors I am able to bestow 
 on any one just now, but let Patella come in." 
 
 The door was opened, and the old woman entered 
 with a quick step, for she was light of foot in spite 
 of her years, and wiry of frame. But as she came 
 nearer the Princess, she stopped, as if the courage 
 she had mustered up for her errand was almost 
 failing her ; then, with a sudden plunge of her right 
 hand into the depths of a pocket in her dress, she 
 brought forth a leathern pouch, tied with a stout 
 string, out of which she drew a roll of bills of the 
 currency of the realm, and, with an almost convulsive 
 movement, cast it into the lap of the Princess. 
 
 " Please, my lady," said Patella, " I have gone and 
 got my money, and it is you I want to have it. I 
 am poor, and do not want it, but a rich lady, like 
 yourself has always been, cannot live without money 
 all the time. It is a thousand sestertia, and I know 
 very well it will all come back to me when I need 
 it." 
 
 The Little Lady had borne up against everything. 
 13 
 
D OMES TIC US. 
 
 She had met the sharp shock of the failure without 
 flinching. She had spurned the proffered purchase 
 of her dower right, almost with disdain. She had 
 not quailed before the vindictiveness of Furax. She 
 had nerved herself to quit house and home with 
 courage, and even with cheerfulness, but at this soft 
 touch of loving-kindness from a humble heart and 
 hand, she gave way completely, and broke into a 
 flood of tears and convulsive sobs. 
 
 Patella was frightened at this unexpected and 
 unusual outburst of feeling. She was on her knees, 
 in an instant, clasping the hands of her mistress, 
 which she kissed with all the fervor that had impelled 
 her generous gift. 
 
 Prima, who thought she had never seen anything 
 more pathetic, looked on with moist eyes. 
 
 The Princess recovered herself in a few moments. 
 In the brief interval of unrestrained feeling, she 
 had not only gained a needed relief from the over 
 strain to which she had been subjected, but also 
 found courage for the only response worthy of the 
 generous self-sacrifice of which Patella s proffered 
 gift was the perfect fruit. 
 
 " I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Patella. 
 I will take the money, gratefully, and you may be 
 sure I will return it; but your kindness is something 
 that touches me most deeply, and this is a debt I 
 fear I shall find it hard to repay." 
 
 The old woman went away happier than she had 
 ever been in her life, for she had dreaded a repulse, 
 or, at least, a refusal. 
 
LEAVING HOME. 195 
 
 When she was alone with her mother, Prima was 
 
 the first to ?pcak. 
 
 " I am so glad you took the money. Of course, I 
 know it will not be wanted or used, but it would 
 have broken her heart if you had refused it." 
 
 " No money was ever safer than this," said the 
 Princess, tightening her clasp on the roll of bills, 
 " and certainly none was ever more lovingly lent. 
 It is a good omen, and I accept it. Deliverance 
 from these evil days is not far distant; but how 
 strange that the first note of succor should have 
 come from the ranks of Domesticus ! " 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 AT A GREAT SACRIFICE. 
 
 4i T)RIMA TO JUVENTUS. . . . Our new home is 
 L pleasant, not by contrast with the one we 
 have left, but in itself. I will tell you how to find it 
 when you come hither. Take the old broad road 
 way, northward beyond the central campus, on the 
 sunset side, until you come to a lane, striking off 
 toward the river bank, which you will know by a 
 round stone tower at its corner, and, following this 
 lane a few rods, you come, on the right hand side, 
 to a square white house of the oldest fashion, on a 
 little bluff, with two willows overhanging the gate. 
 The house is a relic of the past, left almost alone. 
 The last tenant moved away in the spring to a new 
 home, so that our coming works harm to no one. 
 I like the wide outlook which takes in river, shores, 
 and sky. It reminds me of what the dear old 
 painter-poet who went 
 
 Piping down the valleys wild, 
 Piping songs of pleasant glee, 
 
 wrote to his archangel sculptor friend about his 
 little cottage by the sea : Heaven opens here on 
 all sides her golden gates ; her windows are not 
 obstructed by vapors. 
 196 
 
AT A GKEA T SACR11-R A. 
 
 197 
 
 "All are pleased, save Stella. With her, we have 
 had no end of trouble. The removal from the Via 
 Quinta was a great blow, as it separated her from 
 a choice circle of admirers. In the midst of our 
 hard work of settling here, she must needs go off 
 on a picnic which, off course, provoked the most 
 violent tempest and tornado of the season, and the 
 consequence was that she took to her bed for a 
 fortnight. Mamma and I nursed her through the 
 sickness, or, rather, Mamma did, and I helped a 
 little. She was disappointed at not having one or two 
 leading physicians called in, and I think, at one time, 
 began to be apprehensive she might die without the 
 faintest prospect of a Wake. As soon as she got 
 well, she went away for good, without a word of 
 thanks, simply a good-bye, and we hear, through 
 Patella, she has made a bad marriage. I thought 
 her awfully ungrateful, but Mamma says we must 
 not misjudge, and what seems ingratitude in these 
 people is often only a dread of appearing to be 
 under an obligation, and she still thinks there are 
 some stray virtues hidden under all Stella s per- 
 verseness. 
 
 " Papa s affairs are improving. The old jurisconsult 
 Vindex has them in charge. He insists upon it there 
 was no need .of our quitting the palace, but Mamma 
 says it was indispensable, and I think she is right." 
 
 The better aspect of the Prince s affairs alluded to 
 in the above extract from Prima s letter was a cheer 
 ing fact. 
 
198 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 Vindex had entered, with all his energies, upon 
 the task of extricating his old friend and client from 
 the ruin so suddenly precipitated. He was, at first, 
 considerably provoked by the headlong haste with 
 which the Princess had insisted upon leaving the 
 palace ; and he was also not a little taken aback by 
 her positive refusal to accept the proffered payment 
 for her dower right. While he condemned her 
 want of judgment, he could not help admiring the 
 feeling from which her false conclusions flowed. 
 Nevertheless, he was fully determined that no illusive 
 sentiment, however pure and praiseworthy its source, 
 should stand in the way of those absolute and 
 paramount legal rights to which his moral as well 
 as his intellectual vision was adjusted. 
 
 He saw how he could turn the strangely illogical 
 resolve of the Princess to account, for her own ulti 
 mate good, and he lost no time in calling the creditors 
 together, and stating to them, with the most ingenu 
 ous frankness, the decision she had made to decline 
 their offer for her dower right, on the ground that 
 everything should belong to the creditors, which 
 either she or her husband could make over to them. 
 
 This was a bold stroke. Vindex had found, by 
 long experience, that there is no force in human 
 affairs so potent as the plain truth. " The truth," he 
 was accustomed to say, " is always your best hold. 
 Honest men will believe all you tell them. Dis 
 honest men will believe nothing. Thus the truth 
 will serve you, with the one class, as an open door 
 through which your minds can freely meet, and 
 
,/ / A GRE 1 7 SAL K1FICE. l ^g 
 
 with the other class, as a closed screen behind which 
 you may find it convenient to hide." So it proved 
 in this instance. The guileless among the creditors 
 were in accord in commending the action of the 
 Princess, to such a degree that they brought them 
 selves to the point of hesitation, if not unwilling 
 ness, to take advantage of her rare magnanimity, 
 and unitedly disclaimed any disposition to be unjust 
 to her, even at her own request. The few trickish 
 traders among the body thought this show of 
 disinterestedness a pretence contrived by the artful 
 Vindex to ensnare them to their disadvantage. 
 They were in the dark as to what his crooked design 
 might be, and so they were afraid to act ; and the 
 majority being, as is usually the case, honest and 
 fair-minded men, it was finally agreed that the 
 whole matter should be deferred until the lands 
 could be sold to advantage. 
 
 Vindex thus gained time, always the best ally of 
 defendants and debtors, and besides, gained the 
 good-will of the leading creditors, and their active 
 sympathies on the side of the Princess, in voting 
 down the minority of distrusting malcontents. 
 
 Having thus neutralized, and even utilized, the 
 mistaken action of the Princess, without coming 
 into collision with her views or wishes, Vindex 
 went on to put into due course of execution his deep- 
 laid plan for securing the furniture of the palace 
 for her benefit, before she could circumvent him by 
 any more troublesome displays of honest activity 
 against her own interests. 
 
2QO DO ME STIC US. 
 
 He gave orders to enforce the levy which, as we 
 have seen, had been made at the instance of Furax, 
 the hostile creditor, who was the earliest in the field 
 against the unfortunate Prince, whose swift action 
 had placed him ahead of all the others, and whose 
 rights had been purchased by Vindex, and were now 
 enforceable as he pleased. Accordingly, it was duly 
 heralded and proclaimed that the household furni 
 ture, pictures, and other works of art, and all the 
 contents of the palace, would be sold at public out 
 cry on the premises on the seventh day after the first 
 heralding. 
 
 This hostile action was taken in the name of 
 Furax, according to the arrangement made by 
 Vindex when he bought the claim. When it came 
 to the Little Lady s ears it did not surprise her at 
 all. She did not believe Vindex had done a thing 
 to stop the sale, and she wondered, more than ever, 
 why the Prince left everything in the hands of this 
 old, and, as she thought, slow-going veteran, instead 
 of employing some young and enterprising juris 
 consult, who would find some way, by hook or by 
 crook, to trip up Furax, and delay the sale ; for she 
 was so convinced of the wrong involved in hastening 
 it, that she was almost ready to see every law, divine 
 and human, set aside, temporarily, in order to accom 
 plish this just end. 
 
 The Prince seemed to her strangely indifferent 
 to the subject, and as he persisted in refusing to inter 
 fere with Vindex, the Princess again declared her 
 intention of going in person to Furax, to satisfy 
 
AT A GR/-.-1 / SACRIFICE. 2 OI 
 
 him, as she was quite certain she could, that the 
 furniture would be sacrificed, to his great disadvan- 
 and loss. It required all the authority and 
 expostulation the Prince could bring to bear to 
 convince her that this would be a breach of dignity 
 and decorum which could not be allowed. She 
 finally yielded to his views, but could not forbear a 
 thrust at Vindex, in the remark that it was passing 
 strange to her that people thought so much of him, 
 when, with all his supposed skill and learning, he 
 could not get a furniture sale postponed for a few 
 weeks in mid-summer. 
 
 The Prince turned the matter off as lightly as he 
 could. He tried to convince the Princess that it 
 was not of any vital consequence, at the risk, which 
 he well knew he took, of being regarded as almost 
 as cold-blooded and heartless as Vindex himself. 
 The Princess well knew that she could not expect 
 from him, or any of his unfeeling sex, the full 
 sympathy she needed on this sore subject, or a 
 comprehension of feelings they could not share ; 
 and she excused the Prince because he was now 
 absorbed in new engagements which were a part of 
 the improved state of things to which Prima had 
 alluded. His good standing and repute, his long 
 experience in affairs, and his mature abilities, had 
 opened for him several opportunities of activity 
 in new fields of enterprise, and even-thing seemed 
 conspiring toward a better outcome from his 
 troubles than he had at first thought possible. At 
 all events, present wants, on a moderate scale of 
 
202 & OMES TIC US. 
 
 living, were sure to be supplied, and this was a great 
 relief. 
 
 The Little Lady kept silence, and waited until 
 the morning of the sale arrived; then, after the 
 Prince had gone for the day, she said to Prima, 
 
 " I must go to the palace, and I want you to go 
 with me ; I cannot endure the thought of all those 
 things being sold off, without knowing anything 
 about it. Everything will be carted away to-morrow 
 and that will be the end." And her eyes filled with 
 tears. 
 
 " But people will see us there," said Prima. 
 
 " Every one we know is in the country. We can 
 double our veils and not be recognized, and Patella 
 can arrange a screen, or something, so that we need 
 not be noticed." 
 
 Prima gave way as she saw that the consequences 
 of checking her mother s feeling and purpose might 
 be perilous ; and on reflection she saw nothing very 
 hazardous in the proposal. 
 
 The trip to the Via Quinta was easily made by 
 the public conveyance which passed near the house, 
 and they soon found themselves within the portals 
 of the palace, made conspicuous by the red flag 
 which was the conventional signal of a public sale 
 in the Imperial City. " To this complexion has it 
 come at last," thought Prima, as she looked sadly 
 at its vengeful color, fluttering over the threshold of 
 her lost home. 
 
 With the ready aid of Patella, they placed them 
 selves behind some of the taller pieces of furniture 
 
AT A GREA T SACRIFICE. 
 
 203 
 
 which had been placed in prominence on the main 
 floor of the palace, so that they could see and hear 
 what was going on, without being subjected to 
 unpleasant scrutiny. 
 
 The Little Lady s judgment as to the ill-advised 
 time of the sale was borne out by the character of 
 the attendance it had invited. The throng which 
 invaded the precincts of the palace gave little indi 
 cation of furnishing appreciative or liberal bidders. 
 The class of customers for the high grade of articles 
 to be put up for forced sale was wholly unrepresented. 
 The great majority were evidently drawn to the palace 
 by idle curiosity, and, with the exception of a few 
 who might be supposed to belong to the fraternity 
 of dealers in second-hand furniture, and only bought 
 at great bargains, there was no one who looked 
 like a probable purchaser. 
 
 In striking contrast with the generally common 
 place and uninteresting air of the assemblage, was 
 the dignified figure of Vindex, who was one of the 
 earliest comers, and who was attended by a subservi 
 ent assistant intent on watching every glance and 
 gesture of his superior. 
 
 The outcrier, whose business it was to conduct the 
 sale, announced, after the distribution of the lists, 
 that it would begin on the lowest, or underground, 
 floor of the palace, that it would then be continued 
 on the topmost floor, after which he would come 
 down stairs, selling the articles on each lower floor, 
 in successive order. 
 
 This announcement had no sooner been made, 
 
204 
 
 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 than an aggressive-looking individual, who had been 
 engaged in inspecting the various articles displayed 
 in the grand apartments on the main floor, marking 
 prices on the list, and testing the upholstery by 
 sitting down consecutively on all the chairs and 
 sofas, called out, in a loud tone : 
 
 " This is a very queer way of conducting a sale ! 
 Why don t you start by selling the things we have 
 come here to buy, instead of going underground, to 
 begin with pots and kettles?" 
 
 The outcrier of the Imperial City was always 
 ready for every questioner, either with the hard 
 answer which provoketh wrath, or the soft answer 
 which turneth it away. This time it was the soft 
 answer which was forthcoming. 
 
 " Certainly, by all means ; we want everybody to be 
 suited. If there is any article on this floor which 
 any person present wants to have put up and sold 
 immediately, before going down stairs, we will put it 
 up ; and everything put up will be sold to the 
 highest bidder." 
 
 Nothing could be fairer than this, and attention 
 was turned to the aggressive individual, who was evi 
 dently disappointed that his complaint had been so 
 promptly and fully met, and that he had been sum 
 marily deprived of a grievance ; but he responded to 
 the unexpected invitation : 
 
 " Put up the clock and candelabra on the mantel 
 over there. I suppose the clock is warranted to keep 
 good time." 
 
 " The clock and candelabra are put up," said the 
 
ATA GREAT SACRIFICE. 
 
 205 
 
 outcrier ; " I will warrant the clock to go ahead of 
 any clock of its description in this city ; that may 
 make it a little too fast for you ; but any article that 
 doesn t suit may be returned and the money will 
 be refunded. Now what shall I have for the clock 
 and candelabra?" 
 
 " They cost three hundred sestertia," said the 
 Princess, in a whisper, to Prima ; " we bought them 
 years ago Secundus was a baby. The clock never 
 went too fast; it lost a little sometimes, but not 
 much." 
 
 " What shall I have," repeated the outcrier, " for 
 this superb lot clock and candelabra ? " 
 
 " Fifteen sestertia," said the aggressive individual. 
 
 There was a faint shriek. It came from the 
 Princess, who could not resist the temptation of 
 stepping from her hiding-place as the bidding began, 
 and to whom the idea of associating her best clock 
 and candelabra with this pitiful sum was a shock too 
 great to endure in silence. 
 
 Her involuntary exclamation had the immediate 
 effect of turning upon her a large number of eyes, 
 including the particularly sharp pair which were 
 the special property of Vindex. To him she had 
 betrayed herself, but only to him, and he made no 
 sign of recognition. The outcrier wilfully and 
 maliciously, as it seemed to her, interpreted her 
 little shriek as a bid, according to the custom of 
 his craft, and putting it at his own figure, went on, 
 
 " Twenty-five sestertia is bid by the lady in the 
 veil only twenty-five: make it thirty-five?" And he 
 
2o6 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 turned from the dismayed Princess to the aggressive 
 individual, who, greatly to her relief, made it thirty- 
 five, and the outcrier took up the refrain, 
 
 "Thirty-five, only thirty-five, Madam, will you 
 say forty?" 
 
 Before the Princess could settle, in her distracted 
 thoughts, whether keeping perfectly still, or shaking 
 her head wildly, or rushing from the place, was the 
 most effectual way of escaping the responsibilites 
 of a supposed bidder, the attendant of Vindex 
 called out, in a sharp tone 
 
 "Two hundred sestertia." 
 
 "Two hundred two hundred," said the outcrier, 
 accepting the new bid with the nonchalance he had 
 been cultivating for a quarter of a century. " Shall 
 I have more ? Two hundred sestertia is bid." 
 
 " Prima," whispered the Princess, "this is wonder 
 ful. It is the very figure I put on my list. Why 
 if everything sells at this rate, it will be perfectly 
 splendid. What a good-looking man that is who 
 bid. He is standing close by Vindex." 
 
 "I rather think he is doing the bidding of Vindex, 
 in a double sense," said Prima, beginning to be 
 puzzled at what was going on ; but the Princess was 
 too much occupied in watching the proceedings to 
 notice her remark. 
 
 No one competed with the last bidder ; the clock 
 and candelabra were knocked down to him ; his 
 name was called for, and promptly given as Ignotus ; 
 the purchase was recorded, and thereupon the 
 outcrier, in his blandest manner, inquired of the 
 
AT A GREA T SACRIFICE, 2 O? 
 
 aggressive individual if there was anything else on 
 that floor worth two hundred sestertia which he 
 would like to start at fifteen ? On this there was a 
 general laugh by the entire company, with such 
 irritating effect on the individual that with some 
 unpremeditated but forcible expressions of disgust, 
 he made a rapid exit from the palace. 
 
 " I am so glad he has gone," said the Princess to 
 Prima. " To think of his trying to get those things 
 for fifteen sestertia ! He cannot be an honest man. 
 It would have been no better than stealing." 
 
 No further objection being interposed to the 
 order of sale indicated at the beginning by the out- 
 crier, everybody descended, in good humor, to the 
 lower parts of the house, the Princess being now 
 thoroughly aroused by the auspicious episode of 
 the first bidding, and Prima being very curious to 
 watch the progress of events, which she suspected 
 was being shaped by Vindex. 
 
 The first lot put up for sale, below stairs, was 
 a collection of old pails and saucepans, which the 
 Princess told Prima were not worth, all together, more 
 than a single sestertium. But no sooner were they 
 offered for sale, and before an ancient boarding- 
 house keeper who had come, in her best outfit, to 
 bid especially for these articles, had the opportunity 
 of saying a word, Ignotus bid two sestertia, and they 
 were knocked down to him, no one competing; and 
 so on, as each succeeding lot was exposed, he 
 promptly offered twice its possible value, and be 
 came the purchaser, to the great amazement of the 
 
208 DOMEST1CUS. 
 
 disinterested spectators, the consternation of the 
 intending bidders, and the mute wonder of the Prin 
 cess and Prima. 
 
 By the time the list of the down-stairs articles had 
 been gone through, the entire property in that part 
 of the premises, which would have been dear at two 
 hundred and fifty sestertia, had been sold for five 
 hundred. It began to be apparent to the whole 
 company that there was no chance for any one to 
 compete with such a bidder as Ignotus, whose 
 readiness to part with his money seemed a conclu 
 sive indication that he had parted with his senses at 
 some prior period, and whose determination to buy 
 everything, at twice its value, made it a waste of 
 time for any one else to assist further at such a 
 farcical performance. The professional dealers, see 
 ing that there were no bargains to be hoped for, did 
 not care to mount to the top story, and took them 
 selves off; and as to the small remnant of the com 
 pany who made the long ascent to the upper 
 regions, it seemed to the Princess, as she surveyed 
 them, that they were all mere lookers-on at the 
 reckless prodigality of Ignotus. 
 
 The outcry was recommenced ; and again he bid 
 off everything, as fast as it was set up for sale. Old 
 bedsteads, tables, chairs, and washstands, hardly 
 worth carting away, were struck off to him at 
 prices for which they could have been replaced 
 twice over by brand-new articles of the same de 
 scription. He made a clean sweep, giving no one 
 else a chance for so much as a soap-dish or a slop- 
 
AT A GREA T SACRIFICE. 209 
 
 pail ; and by the time the descent to the third story 
 was made, the effect of his selfish monopoly of pur 
 chasing had been to drive every one from the sale, 
 except a mere handful of idlers, in whom the expe 
 rienced eye of the outcrier discerned only the un 
 mistakable non-bidders who hang about salesrooms 
 with no ability or intention to buy. 
 
 At this stage, and with as much formality as if 
 the original crowd before which the outcry was 
 begun were still present, he announced that if any 
 person desired any particular article on the third 
 floor, or elsewhere in the palace, to be separately set 
 up, it should be done ; if not, he was instructed to 
 say that the whole remaining contents of the pal 
 ace, as set forth in the list, would be now put up 
 as one lot, and sold together. The small cluster of 
 people who had remained, solely for further partici 
 pation in what seemed to them the good joke of 
 Ignotus wasting his money, had no possible con 
 cern in opposing any method of sale which seemed 
 good to the outcrier, and they made no response to 
 his inquiry, whereupon he immediately put up, in a 
 single lot, everything in the palace which had not 
 been previously sold. 
 
 Ignotus, with customary promptness, bid five 
 hundred sestertia. 
 
 Dead silence followed for a moment, broken by a 
 sharp cry from the Princess. 
 
 " Five hundred sestertia ! Why they are worth 
 fifteen thousand !" 
 
 " Do I hear fifteen thousand ? " said the outcrier, 
 "4 
 
2io DOMESTICUS. 
 
 turning his swift professional glance on the Princess. 
 " Fifteen thousand, shall I have more ? Make it 
 sixteen ? Going at fifteen thousand." 
 
 " No, no ! " cried the Princess, in terrible confusion, 
 flying toward the nearest door opening into the 
 rear hall-way. 
 
 " Five hundred, then," said the imperturbable 
 outcrier, " the lady in the veil withdrawing her bid 
 and herself too." A remark by no means intended to 
 be disrespectful, but only by way of keeping up that 
 constant practice of jocularity supposed to be the 
 first requisite of a successful outcrier. Then he rang 
 the changes and exhausted every inflection on the 
 five hundred sestertia bid by Ignotus, and ended by 
 knocking down to him the entire remaining contents 
 of the palace for this sum. Adding this to his pre 
 vious biddings, the total purchases amounted to 
 about fifteen hundred sestertia, which Ignotus paid 
 on the spot, in the currency of the realm, and the 
 sale was declared at an end. 
 
 The Little Lady did not recover from the shock 
 she had sustained for a considerable time. The 
 sudden set back from the flood tide of over-values 
 to the dead low-water mark of that contemptible five 
 hundred sestertia had almost deprived her of her 
 senses. When she came to herself and re-entered 
 the apartment, she found that everything was over ; 
 the outcrier had gone, and nothing was to be seen of 
 Vindex or his attendant. 
 
 " I suppose, Patella," said the Princess, " they 
 will be coming for everything to-morrow." 
 
AT A GREA T SA CRII-R YT. 2 1 1 
 
 "No, my lady, just as they were going out, the 
 old gentleman with the bright eyes, you mind who 
 I mean " 
 
 " Yes, yes, what of him ? " 
 
 " He came to me and handed me this," showing 
 a handsome guerdon in the standard currency, "and 
 said: Keep everything safe, as you would for your 
 mistress, nothing is to go away and then he turned 
 on his heel and went with the rest of them." 
 
 " What does all this mean ? " said the Princess, 
 turning to Prima. 
 
 " I cannot imagine," said Prima, " but I am very 
 sure Vindex knows all about it." 
 
 " Then it is infamous ! How can he know all 
 about it, unless he is a traitor to your father? Let 
 us get home, as quickly as possible, and see what 
 can be done this evening to prevent this fearful sac 
 rifice." 
 
 The Prince came home with a beaming face ; he 
 brought a large and well-filled envelope, sealed with 
 several seals, and directed to the Princess, which he 
 said Vindex had charged him to deliver to her. 
 
 The name of Vindex was distasteful to the Prin 
 cess, in her present frame of mind ; she handed the 
 package to Prima, who opened it and produced a bulky 
 document, which the Princess instantly recognized 
 as the voluminous list prepared by Prima and her 
 self, which she had forwarded to Vindex with her 
 own hand. 
 
 " What does he want to send that back for ? It 
 
212 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 is of no use now," said the Princess, with unwonted 
 bitterness in her tone. " Why add insult to in 
 jury?" 
 
 " But, Mamma, there is something else here, fas 
 tened to the list, in front of it. It is partly in writing 
 and partly in print" 
 
 The Prince put on his eye-glasses and looked 
 carefully at the paper. 
 
 " It is a bill of sale," said he. "You had better 
 read it." 
 
 The Princess, whose curiosity was greatly excited 
 by the return of her list, took the document and 
 began to read : 
 
 " Know all men by these presents that .1, Igno- 
 tus/ why that is the very man who bought every 
 thing ! " exclaimed the Princess. 
 
 Her husband pricked up his ears. " How could 
 the Princess know that," he said to himself, "when 
 the sale only took place this morning?" But he 
 would not interrupt the reading, and the Princess 
 continued, 
 
 " For and in consideration of the sum of one 
 sestertium, to me in hand paid by bless me, 
 here is my own name ! What a falsehood ! I 
 never paid him anything, the receipt whereof is 
 hereby acknowledged, have bargained, sold, as 
 signed, transferred, and set over, and by these pres 
 ents do bargain, sell, assign, transfer and set over 
 to/ here comes my own name again All the 
 household furniture, effects, pictures, statues, works 
 of art, ornaments, and property of every description, 
 
AT A GREAT SACRIFICE. 
 
 2I 3 
 
 particularly specified in the annexed list marked 
 A, that is my list, which is all correct enough, 
 as Prima and I know very well, but what business 
 has this Ignotus with it ? To have and to hold the 
 same, and every part and parcel thereof how per 
 fectly absurd! as if I or anybody else could hold 
 such a great mass of stuff? To her, her execu 
 tors, administrators, and assigns forever that is 
 dreadfully irreverent, because nobody can have 
 things forever. Prima, what does all this mean ? Oh, 
 dear! can it be because I cried out fifteen thousand, 
 when Ignotus said five hundred ? Are we all lost? " 
 
 The Prince pricked up his ears again, but before 
 he could speak, Prima clapped her little hands and 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " I think I see through it all. Ignotus was Vin- 
 dex, and Vindex was Furax, and somehow, Vindex 
 has got the claim of Furax, and has arranged to 
 have the sale at this dull time and to manage the 
 biddings, just in the way they were managed, so as 
 to get all the furniture at a low price, and now he 
 has turned over every bit of it to you. Of course, 
 you will have to pay him the money Ignotus bid, 
 but it is a very small sum, compared to what the 
 things are worth, and Vindex will wait for it, because 
 he is your friend and papa s." 
 
 " But it is downright dishonesty," said the Prin 
 cess. 
 
 " Why is it ? " asked the Prince. 
 
 " Because the creditors will not get the full value 
 of the furniture," said the Princess. " It does seem 
 
2I 4 
 
 DOMESTIC US. 
 
 to me as if Vindex were trying to cheat them all the 
 time, under pretence of doing something for me." 
 
 " But see," said the Prince, " it doesn t harm them 
 in the least The sale was a public one, and duly 
 heralded, and if they wanted the furniture, all they 
 had to do was to go and bid for it, and buy it if 
 they could. Furax was so keen that he got ahead 
 of the others, and if they had bid at the sale it 
 would only have been for his benefit, or the benefit 
 of the present owner of his claim, because until that 
 was paid, nothing would go to the other creditors. 
 As all the furniture at full value did not equal 
 his debt, they kept away and are not hurt by 
 the sale. Prima has guessed correctly ; it was a 
 scheme of Vindex, to save everything for you, with 
 out doing the slightest injury to anybody else, and 
 so the furniture is yours by a perfectly valid title." 
 
 " I don t understand it," said the Princess. " There 
 is too much circumlocution and gibberish about it 
 to suit me." 
 
 " I understand it," said Prima, " and I believe it 
 is all perfectly right. Furax cannot complain ; he 
 got all he was entitled to when he sold his claim to 
 Vindex ; the creditors cannot complain, because 
 they did not choose to attend the sale, and they 
 would have got nothing if they had attended it." 
 
 " This bill of sale, as you call it," cried the Prin 
 cess, after a pause, " is not valid, after all! I know 
 that by what Vindex told me himself. I have not 
 paid anything, ever, to this Ignotus, and nothing is 
 valid unless you pay, except there is natural love 
 
AT A GREA T SA CRIFICE. 2 1 5 
 
 and affection about it, and I haven t got any of that 
 for Ignotus, and I never could have, because he is 
 not one of my relations." 
 
 " Vindex has taken care of that," said the Prince. 
 " When he handed me these papers he asked me to 
 pay him a sestertium on your account, and I paid 
 him." 
 
 " But that is not paying it to Ignotus." 
 
 "No; but, don t you see, Ignotus has acknowl 
 edged receipt of it in the bill of sale, and that binds 
 him." 
 
 The Princess was silenced. Vindex was a cruel 
 and ruthless benefactor. 
 
 " Then all that diving down below stairs, and 
 mounting to the top floor and out-bidding every 
 body, was a contrivance of Vindex. I didn t think 
 at the time it was a fair sale." 
 
 " How could you think anything about it? " cried 
 the Prince ; " you were not there." 
 
 "I was there," said the Princess; and then the 
 whole story was told, at first to the dismay of the 
 Prince, but finally to his great entertainment, as the 
 graphic description of the Princess and Prima 
 brought the whole scene before him. 
 
 " There is no help for it," said he, when their 
 tale was told. " The furniture is yours, in spite of 
 yourself." 
 
 "I suppose I must submit," said the Princess; 
 " what can a poor ignorant woman do against a 
 cunning old jurisconsult? He has turned the 
 tables upon me." 
 
2 1 6 D ME STIC US. 
 
 " He has turned a whole house full of furniture on 
 you, mamma," said Prima ; " and it is all yours, and 
 by good right, and not a piece need ever go out of 
 your possession. I think what Vindex has done is 
 immensely clever and immensely kind, and I shall 
 always love him, next to you and papa, and the 
 children and Juventus." 
 
 " How pleased Patella will be ! " said the Princess. 
 
 And, by this final and unselfish remark, she gave 
 an unconscious attestation to the truth that in the 
 wonderful intertwining of human sympathies and 
 affairs the highest and the lowliest may meet on the 
 common ground of the heart. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE IMPERIAL CITY S SHAME. 
 
 IF anything in the progress of this truthful story 
 may have raised the presumption that it has sev 
 eral purposes, it is certainly free from the imputa 
 tion of having any plot. It is lacking in the first 
 essential requisite of a leading villain, unless this 
 role is to be ill-naturedly attributed to Domesticus. 
 Our good Prince, with all his misfortunes, was 
 never involved in the meshes of a secret marriage, 
 or any other entangling alliance, in advance of his 
 union with the Little Lady, and there is no discarded 
 or concealed wife, or avenging female fury, to be 
 sprung upon the Princess, or the reader, at any 
 critical point in these pages. The path of the Little 
 Lady was like the shining light, and so there is not 
 an element of that whole intricate sphere of cross- 
 purposes and counter-crimes which makes the 
 modern detective and the Divorce Court the novel 
 ist s best friends, from which an incident can be 
 drawn to throw its startling hues against the sober 
 background of the well-attested facts which are the 
 basis of this truthful narrative. 
 
 As an offset to these confessed imperfections, it 
 may perhaps be well pleaded that the period of time 
 
 217 
 
2i 8 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 between the birth of the Little Lady and the point 
 at which we have now arrived, with all its vicissi 
 tudes, has been traversed with unexampled rapidity ; 
 that the loves of Juventus and Prima, tempting a 
 digression into a field as flowery and as unlimited 
 as their own correspondence, have been rigidly, 
 almost rudely, condensed into the smallest compass ; 
 and that the martial exploits in the field, the hard 
 service in the camp, and the occasional suffering in 
 the hospital, of our young soldier, have been kept 
 wholly out of sight. If a great deal of time has 
 been covered, and many years have been unrolled in 
 the panorama, I have not paused to dwell upon the 
 details of their progress, or to divert the interest 
 which it is hoped may have attached to the par 
 ticular fortunes we are following, and which must 
 tax, a little longer, the indulgence of the reader. 
 
 Juventus had found active service and speedy 
 promotion. He had escaped fatal disaster. He had 
 met with a due share of rough handling, of hair 
 breadth escapes, and perilous enterprises. With the 
 exception of an occasional flying visit to the Im 
 perial City, he had been, during the first two years 
 of his service, continuously on duty. The news of 
 the misfortunes of the Prince reached him in the 
 distant camp, far down the eastern coast of Magna 
 Patria, where his division of the great army of the 
 Sisterhood was entrenched, and from which he sent 
 to Prima the expression at once of his regret for 
 the mischance which had come to the Prince, 
 whose foreboding farewell he had never forgotten, 
 
THE IMPERIAL CITY S SHAME. 2 \g 
 
 and his satisfaction at feeling that he was now, 
 more than ever, himself charged with the duty of 
 protecting and caring for her. 
 
 Dark days had come in the progress of the fierce 
 struggle, in which he and so many brave spirits 
 were bearing the brunt of the desperate onset now 
 made with renewed fury upon the forces of the 
 Sisterhood. The strife had long ago reached the 
 full measure and stature of a civil war, and now the 
 theatre of two of the main contending armies was 
 north of the invisible line. A strong invading 
 force, led by the foremost rebel chieftain, had 
 crossed the border, and was offering battle on the 
 fair fields and among the hitherto peaceful valleys 
 of the upper side. It was at this juncture, on the 
 eve of an impending combat which might be decis 
 ive of the fate of the Sisterhood, in the seventh 
 month of the third year in which the cruel strife 
 had been raging, that, of a sudden, the darkest 
 cloud which ever burst over the Imperial City dis 
 charged its fatal bolts, and wrapped the great 
 metropolis in its dismal folds. 
 
 The city had been more than loyal to the good 
 cause. It had given without stint. It had stood 
 between an empty Treasury and bankruptcy. It 
 had stopped the mouths of traitors and traducers. 
 It had sent its many well-equipped cohorts and 
 legions to the front. It had done all things 
 well and nobly. But now the long waste of the 
 war was taxing to the utmost the resources of 
 the whole land. The red hand of carnage clutched 
 
2 2Q D OMES TIC US. 
 
 \vhatever was needed to feed the devouring flame it 
 had kindled. More money and more men was the 
 daily cry. The only real money, the gold and 
 silver, had been drained off over sea, or had disap 
 peared out of sight. Paper promises of the Sister 
 hood passed from hand to hand in their place. 
 
 But, while paper money might pass for real money, 
 there was no such thing as filling the ranks of the 
 fighters with paper men. Only real men would 
 answer for this greatest need, and when the belliger 
 ents would pause, after a pitched battle, reeking 
 with blood and ghastly with wounds, to reckon the 
 number of their killed, wounded, and missing, by 
 the score of thousands, sometimes to reach the 
 frightful aggregate of two score thousand on both 
 sides, no wonder that men were more and more 
 needed to fill the depleted ranks. Voluntary en 
 listment had been unexampled, but the day came 
 when the call for involuntary service was inevitable. 
 Then it was that a great outcry made by some 
 voices in high places, denouncing conscription, was 
 caught up by demagogues, and echoed in lower 
 places, while in the Imperial City, in the very lowest 
 places, it came to be the secret rallying cry of dis 
 affection and traitorous plots, the potent germ of a 
 wild, volcanic outbreak. 
 
 " Conscript " was a hateful word, and conscription 
 was a hated thing. Mixed with the hatred was the 
 secret working of a concealed bitterness which found 
 in this depth of hate a lower depth, in a hatred of 
 the cause the conscript would be called to serve. 
 
THE IMPERIAL CITY S SHAME. 2 2l 
 
 At last, the day came round when the drawing of 
 conscripts for the ranks of the army must begin in 
 the Imperial City. A great wheel was to be set up 
 containing the names of all citizens, between twenty 
 and forty-five years of age, with such exceptions 
 as public functionaries, only sons of widows de 
 pendent upon them for support, and others so 
 situated as to make exemption a humane necessity. 
 This wheel was to be turned in public, and the names 
 were to be drawn by a blindfolded ministrant, and 
 when drawn the persons they indicated were bound 
 to two years of military service, unless they could 
 furnish a suitable substitute in the person of an 
 able-bodied man, or could pay a stipulated sum, far 
 beyond the means of the ordinary workingman 
 whose daily labor was the sole source of his support. 
 
 The excitement was intense. It was said that here 
 was a great wrong thrust upon the people. The 
 turn of the fateful wheel would instantly wrest many 
 a poor and honest man from w r ife, and children, and 
 home, and from the peaceful industry which sup 
 ported his needy family, to hurl him to the battle 
 field, the hospital, the grave. The rich could pur 
 chase exemption with money ; the poor were help 
 less as sheep sold in the shambles. 
 
 Nevertheless, few of those persons who denounced 
 the drawing were disposed to resist it by force. 
 There were mutterings of discontent, but no open 
 calls for concerted opposition. At the appointed 
 hour, a thousand citizens gathered about the door 
 of the building in which the great wheel began to 
 
222 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 turn in the presence of the smaller number of spec 
 tators who had been admitted to witness the draw 
 ing, and the blindfolded official went on in the dis 
 charge of his duty, undisturbed and uninterrupted, 
 save by the occasional jokes and jeers with which the 
 names, as they were drawn, were recognized and 
 commented on by the bystanders. The crowd 
 was orderly and quiet, and twelve hundred names, 
 in all, were drawn and announced in public hearing, 
 and then deposited, for safe-keeping, in an iron 
 chest, and the day s work was ended. 
 
 Before the next day fixed for the drawing had 
 dawned, a different state of things was impending. 
 
 Soon after its sunrise, a body of workmen met, 
 according to a preconcerted plan, and began a 
 round of visits to the various factories, yards and 
 workshops, on the eastern side of the Imperial City, 
 compelling the laborers to break off from their work, 
 and to join them in their march to the place where 
 the hated drawing was to be resumed and continued. 
 Reinforced by willing or by impressed recruits, a 
 vast body was soon in motion, made up of the com 
 pact nucleus of workmen and the loose material 
 of the streets, which always makes haste to swell the 
 dimensions of a mob. It halted in front of the 
 building, within which the wheel had already begun 
 to revolve, and it was soon evident that a counter 
 revolution had begun without. 
 
 There was a short pause, the momentary lull which 
 precedes the bursting of a storm, and then, with head 
 long fury, and wild cries, and a thick cloud of mis- 
 
THE IMPERIAL CITY S SHAME. 
 
 22 3 
 
 siles, the mob hurled itself against the doors, broke 
 into the enclosure, and rouled the handful of enroll 
 ing officers, who fled in dismay with battered heads 
 and limbs, and fearful, if not fatal, bruises. The in 
 vaders vainly battered the iron chest in search of 
 i he list of conscripts, to destroy it. Failing of this, 
 they tore into shreds the books and papers of the 
 officials, broke in pieces the implements they had 
 used, and scattered them among the hooting crowd 
 outside, who, all alive with a demoniac frenzy, 
 engendered by the first outburst of violence, kindled 
 flaming brands and torches, and set fire to the build 
 ing, tenanted though it was by persons wholly 
 unconnected with the conscription, and burned it 
 to ashes, keeping off, by brute force, the brave 
 rescuers who came in the way of their appointed 
 duty, and at the risk of life, to extinguish the 
 flames. 
 
 The news of this lawless outbreak spread through 
 the city which went wild with excitement. It had 
 been in peril, years before, when the pestilence 
 which walked in darkness and wasted at noonday 
 threatened a fearful destruction. Later on, the 
 fierce flames had swept it with a conflagration, 
 known in its history, ever after, as " the great fire," 
 but never had it seen such a day as this, the deepest 
 disgrace of which was the inability to cope with, 
 and stamp out, at a moment s note of alarm, this 
 rising insurrection. The pressing needs of the 
 relentless strife had drawn away the soldiery ; the 
 civic force, well ordered, well appointed, bravely 
 
224 
 
 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 and wisely handled, and all sufficient for the ordi 
 nary needs of daily service, was inadequate to the 
 task of a campaign against an organized revolt 
 which, with its swift contamination of infectious 
 rage, was about to turn the Imperial City from a 
 peaceful community of law-abiding citizens, into a 
 jungle where wild beasts, in howling packs, were 
 lurking for their prey and thirsting for blood. 
 
 The mob which had sacked, and pillaged, and 
 fired the enrolling bureau, flushed with its first vic 
 tory, and inflamed with its own fury, rushed, under 
 the lead of its organizers, to storm a great depot of 
 arms, in the Via Secunda, one of the leading avenues 
 in the quarter where the first movement had been 
 made. To plunder this place, and to put the 
 weapons of attack into the hands of the mob, would be 
 to improvise an invading army which could occupy 
 that whole densely populated district of the city as 
 a base. The building was bravely defended by a 
 little band of keepers. A shot was fired from 
 within, upon the lawless, attacking party, and a 
 workman who was in its front rank fell mortally 
 wounded. This was the signal for a general on 
 slaught. The maddened crowd, with a battle cry 
 of curses and armed with sledges, bludgeons, and 
 hammers, broke down doors, windows, and barriers ; 
 pelted the garrison with paving stones ; flung their 
 blazing brands into the building; and in less than an 
 hour it was a mass of inextinguishable flames. 
 
 And now the evil spirit of brute violence was all 
 abroad. It stirred into swift activity the vilest 
 
THI-: i.Mrr.RiAf. CITY S SHAME. 
 
 225 
 
 instinct, the blood-scent of which was foci by a sense 
 less hatred of the race whose wrongs were wrapped 
 up in the encircling horrors of the war. This was 
 let loose to fasten its cruel fangs, all at once and in 
 this hour of darkness, upon such poor, helpless ob 
 ject^ of its rage as were unwarned of their sudden 
 peril. It worked the most hideous horrors of the 
 dismal time. In the open streets of the Imperial 
 City, from lamp posts and trees, dangled the quiv 
 ering bodies of these murdered victims, strangled 
 for their color, for whom death, without shrift, or 
 mercy, or a moment s warning, was dealt out by 
 their infuriated, persecuting foes. To the torment 
 of strangulation was added the torture of fire, plied 
 with all the savagery of the wildest tribes of red- 
 men. With a like frenzy, set on fire of hell, the 
 mob stormed, and sacked, and fired, on the first day 
 of the outbreak, a noble hospitium on the Via 
 Quinta, built to shelter and train orphan children of 
 the same dusky race. Seven hundred of these help 
 less creatures had been gathered and were cared for 
 within its walls, by the good genius Miserecordia 
 and her noble, tender band of sisters. With fiend 
 ish violence, in the broad day, the work of destruc 
 tion was begun and finished by the brutal band 
 which, amidst the screams of the terror-stricken, 
 fleeing women and children, pitched its infernal 
 yells at a higher key, and held frantic revel in the 
 blazing ruin which it wrought. 
 
 A great fear fell on the Imperial City, and then a 
 great indignation and wrath blazed in the breast of 
 15 
 
226 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 every true citizen. The city itself was powerless. 
 Its own civil force had rallied to its rescue, with a 
 heroism worthy of all praise. Their foremost officer 
 had braved the dangers of the mob and been beaten 
 off, barely escaping with his life ; his chief assistant, 
 his faithful aids, and his unflinching rank and file, had 
 stood at every post of duty, undismayed, but power 
 less, in the presence of such an uprising. The great 
 city must bear upon its brow the brand of insurrec 
 tion, and be put under martial law, and trained troops 
 be summoned, with hottest haste, to recapture it 
 from the hands of its own lawless hordes. 
 
 The many-headed mob, having tasted the mad 
 dening draught of unrestrained license, were now 
 not only gibbeting the dark-skinned objects of their 
 fury, and burning and pillaging public buildings, but 
 were bent on firing the dwellings of some obnoxious 
 citizens, were marking others fen- destruction, and 
 were turning from indiscriminate violence to organ 
 ized plunder. 
 
 For three successive days the fearful struggle 
 went on. By degrees, the military forces were 
 concentrated against the insurgents in sufficient 
 numbers to check them at every point, and drive 
 them back, but only after sharp contests and hand- 
 to-hand fighting in the streets. The rioters poured 
 their ceaseless fire and hurled their volleys of stones 
 from doors, windows and house-tops, finding, when 
 repulsed, new rallying points and fresh opportunities 
 of plunder, and inventing new methods of terror and 
 attack, until the steady, well-drilled cohorts, with 
 
THE IMPERIAL CITY S SHAME. 2 2/ 
 
 their unflinching nerve and resistless will, over 
 whelmed them at all points, with such slaughter 
 that they were scattered and put to flight, and at 
 last, from sheer exhaustion, relaxed their bloody and 
 brutal clutch upon the civic life. 
 
 The revolt was not, let it be always remembered, 
 at any moment, or in any sense, an uprising of the 
 people, but only a fermentation of the dregs of the 
 populace. The patient loyalty of the good citi 
 zens, of every class, would have sufficed to bear the 
 strain of the conscription. It was in the cruel spite 
 and hatred toward the proscribed race; the ever- 
 present jealousy and grudge which the criminal and 
 degraded portion of the population of a great me 
 tropolis holds in reserve against its well to do and 
 wealthier inhabitants ; and in the secret sympathy for 
 the cause which was striving to overturn the govern 
 ment, that the plotters who worked in secret, and the 
 ruffians who filled the streets with riot, found the fuel 
 for the flames they kindled. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 DANGERS AND DELIVERANCES. 
 
 IT was on the last day of this wild carnival of 
 insurrection that a vessel of war, bearing the 
 starry flag of the Sisterhood, whose voyage had 
 been northward, along the eastern shores and capes 
 of Magna Patria, crossed the bar, sailed up the broad 
 bay, and came to a safe mooring at a wharf at the 
 lower end of the Imperial City, on its western side. 
 The first person who stepped ashore was Juventus. 
 He had been sent, at short notice, by his command 
 ing officer, on a mission of secret military service, to 
 the Imperial City, where he was to report accord 
 ing to his instructions and await orders from the 
 seat of government. He was in the undress uni 
 form of his command and rank, and his tall form, 
 bronzed face, and soldierly air, made him a conspicu 
 ous figure, as he crossed the street which skirted 
 the river, and went, with rapid steps, toward the 
 main, broad avenue of the City. 
 
 His route lay through a narrow street, crossing a 
 net work of crowded tenements, filled with such 
 denizens as swarm in the degradation and filth which 
 make the plague-spots of a metropolis. Scarcely had 
 he set foot in this pestilent precinct before he became 
 228 
 
DANGERS AND DEI ITERANCES. 
 
 22 9 
 
 conscious of a sudden sound of jeers, and hootings, 
 and derisive shouts ; his way was blocked by a throng 
 of half-clad, begrimed imps and blear-eyed hags, in 
 rags and tatters, while on the edge of the motley 
 mass, attracted by its wild outcries, rough men 
 came pushing their way toward him with oaths 
 and threats, and from the whole crowd, in one shrill, 
 united shriek, went up a cry for his blood. 
 
 Juventus was in the hands of the mob ; its spirit 
 now diffused, as by a secret electric current, through 
 all the vilest elements of the population, could 
 improvise at any moment, and at any point where 
 its material existed, a force for its foul and fiendish 
 work. The sight of the blue uniform of a soldier 
 of the Sisterhood was a sure and swift incentive for 
 its cruel and bloody outburst. 
 
 In his ignorance of the cause of this strange, hos 
 tile demonstration, Juventus was dazed and stupe 
 fied. Had he landed in the great, loyal metropolis 
 of his country, or was he, by some strange mis 
 chance, thrown into the streets of one of the capitals 
 of the revolting sisters ? He could hardly tell, but 
 the present danger must be met, and he braced 
 himself against the wall of the building by the side 
 of which he was passing when so unexpectedly 
 stopped, and tried to silence the shouts which were 
 deafening him, by demanding in a loud voice why he 
 was interfered with ? He called upon the crowd to 
 give way and let him pass, using, at the same time, 
 all his strength to make a pathway for himself. A 
 storm of jeers was all the answer he evoked ; foul 
 
230 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 words and filthy missiles flew thick and fast ; while 
 the men who now confronted him, with savage jeers, 
 he saw were fully able to overpower him. His life 
 was in their hands, but he would sell it dearly. 
 
 He was just gathering his strength for a desperate 
 struggle when his watch was demanded, and in the 
 same breath, his money. From the furtive glances 
 and lowered tones of the foremost ruffians, he 
 gathered, in an instant, the idea that they intended 
 to possess themselves of the booty to be gained by 
 plundering him of his valuables, for their own bene 
 fit, before delivering him over to the mercies of the 
 mob. His watch he would never give up it was 
 Prima s gift but, quick as thought, he drew, from 
 the inner breast pocket of his coat, a roll of bills 
 amounting to several hundred sestertia, and separa 
 ting them, as he pulled them forth, he flung them 
 broadcast, into the crowd. In an instant, and with 
 a wilder yell than he had yet heard, the whole devil 
 ish pack turned upon itself, to catch and seize the 
 descending shower, and to scramble and fight for 
 the treasure so suddenly dispensed. The crowd 
 gave way from the wall of the building against which 
 he stood ; he slipped past, and without the slightest 
 sense of shame, took to his heels, with such fleetness 
 of foot that before the mad struggle for the money 
 was over, he was beyond reach, and had gained the 
 thoroughfare he sought. 
 
 Here he found, to his surprise, that no public 
 conveyances were in sight. The usually thronged 
 street was almost deserted. He hailed the only 
 
D \NCEKS AND DELIVERANCES. 231 
 
 vehicle to be seen, driven by a drayman, beside 
 whom he seated himself, and asked an explana 
 tion of the mystery of iniquity he had so strangely 
 encountered. It was quickly gi\vn, and Juvcntus, 
 as quickly, secured a promise from his companion 
 to take him, forthwith, to the headquarters of the 
 military forces to which the City, being under mar 
 tial law, was now subject. 
 
 " I must have a hand in this fight," said Juventus, 
 with a voice and air of prowess which made the 
 drayman think he carried Caesar. 
 
 The appearance of an officer, fresh from the battle 
 fields where the strife for the Sisterhood was raging, 
 with his ready offer of instant service, was most 
 opportune, for the need of skilled commanders was 
 very great. Juventus lost no time in assuming the 
 duties assigned him, and within two hours from the 
 time of his deliverance from the mob, he was at the 
 head of a corps of sharp-shooters, opening upon a 
 horde of the rioters a destructive fire, before which 
 they fled in terror and despair. 
 
 The conflict was almost ended ; but after night-fall, 
 tidings came that the insurgents had rallied, in 
 great numbers, as if for a final onslaught, and were 
 pillaging and plundering, in a quarter of the City 
 where the force of soldiery detailed to disperse them 
 had proved too weak, and had been repulsed with 
 serious loss, leaving some of their number dead in 
 the streets. The crisis was imminent. This new 
 stronghold of the rioters was on two of the avenues, 
 on the eastern side, running parallel to each other, 
 
232 D OMES TIC US. 
 
 and in the streets crossing them at right angles; 
 both avenues and streets being designated by num 
 bers, according to the method of the Imperial City 
 in its northernmost districts, the avenues held by the 
 rioters being the Via Prima and the Via Secunda, 
 and the streets, those ranging from twenty-third to 
 twenty-ninth, in numerical order. 
 
 Juventus and his command were ordered to the 
 scene of this fresh victory of the mob and reaching 
 it by a quick march, found the hostile forces in 
 full possession of many of the houses along the 
 Via Secunda, and in the adjacent streets, posted at 
 the windows, and on the roofs, whence their aim 
 could be sure and deadly, and their destructive mis 
 siles hurled with murderous effect. 
 
 Juventus gave orders to his men, first to sweep 
 the streets with their fire, and then to turn it upon 
 the windows and house-tops, moving forward steadily 
 along the line held by the mob. A terrible battle 
 ensued. The streets were cleared and the rioters 
 turned into a howling, fleeing mass, in which the 
 dead and the wounded were trampled upon by the 
 terror-stricken fugitives; while the shots fired from 
 the close ranks of the soldiery, at the houses, win 
 dows, and roofs, took fatal effect. 
 
 The insurgents, driven from the houses, took to 
 the streets, and the fighting went on, at close quar 
 ters, ending with the flight of the now thoroughly 
 panic-stricken and beaten mob. Juventus ordered a 
 close pursuit in the main avenue, and a clearing of 
 the side streets, to prevent the rallying of the broken 
 
DANGERS AND DEI. ITERANCES. 
 
 233 
 
 forces of the enemy. He turned a detachment of 
 his men into one of the streets, at the corner of 
 which, from a tall house, some of the sharpest firing 
 had come. As he halted to let his men go by, and 
 to see that nothing endangered the rear of the 
 column, a blow from behind, whether dealt close at 
 hand, or by a stone hurled from above, he never 
 knew, struck him to the ground. He sprang to his 
 feet, with a dizzy and confused brain ; in the dark 
 ness of the night, left for the moment without the 
 power of speech, hardly with the power of thought, 
 he could give no word of command, or call for 
 aid ; his men, unwitting of his disaster, pushed on in 
 their pursuit while he felt himself caught by strong 
 hands, and knew, upon regaining full consciousness, 
 that he was helpless, and a prisoner. 
 
 Although powerless to resist, the first feeling of 
 Juventus, on coming to a clear comprehension of 
 his position, was that of surprise that he had not 
 been killed outright, but as the experience of the 
 morning had taught him that the greed of gain was, 
 with many of the brutal band of rioters, a stronger 
 motive than the thirst for revenge, he thought it 
 possible he was to be held for ransom. Not a word 
 was spoken as he was led by his captors through a 
 door-way level with the street, into the long narrow 
 hall of the high building, already mentioned, from 
 the upper windows of which he had marked that a 
 murderous and persistent fire had been kept up, 
 until silenced by the fatal, answering shots from his 
 own ranks. 
 
234 
 
 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 There was a dim light in the passage, and as he 
 was hurried past the narrow stair-way, he caught 
 sight of the flashing eyes of a woman who stood 
 on the landing above, looking down upon him, her 
 face enveloped in a black wrap, and her form quiv 
 ering from head to foot. Beyond the stair-way, and 
 underneath it, were steps leading to the cellar of the 
 house, and after descending these he was conducted 
 to the rear vault, into which he was thrust, and left 
 in utter darkness. 
 
 His brain was not yet entirely clear, and sharp 
 pains shot through it. He threw off his cap, and 
 pressed his hands against his head, to make sure 
 there was no fracture or contusion, and then he 
 groped about his prison, to discover its limits and 
 possible openings. It was simply a vault for coal, 
 a heap of which he soon encountered. It had, in 
 the rear, an open shaft, bricked on all sides and cov 
 ered at the top with an iron grating. The sole 
 egress from the vault was the door by which he 
 had entered, now locked on the outside. 
 
 How long a time passed after he finished this 
 exploration and while he sat in the darkness, or 
 what were the thoughts which filled and crowded 
 his mind, in its bewilderment and uncertainty, he 
 could never tell. In the retrospect it seemed a dis 
 mal blank, but he never forgot his sudden recall to 
 the keenest exercise of his senses when he caught 
 the sound of footsteps, and of what seemed a slow 
 tramp overhead, and presently, of digging in the 
 earth, just beyond the open grating. It crossed his 
 
DANGERS AND DELIVERANCES. 235 
 
 mind that perhaps his own grave was in preparation, 
 and he felt, more than ever, how futile resistance 
 would be. Quickened by this new sense of danger, 
 he listened more eagerly, and perceived that the 
 work of digging went on in dead silence, not a 
 word being uttered, nor a sound made, save by 
 the dull, monotonous spade-thrusts. Just at this 
 moment, he was conscious of a faint, rustling noise, 
 and the turning of a key ; then he heard his own 
 name breathed in a whisper so soft as to convey a 
 command of silence as well as a summons. 
 
 In the darkness, he could not discern the speaker, 
 but he sprang forward toward the door; the in 
 stinct of self-preservation restraining him from any 
 spoken word. Extending his hand, he felt it 
 grasped by another hand, quivering and icy cold. 
 Yielding to its guidance, he was led to the front of 
 the underground passage, and there his unseen 
 deliverer spoke. 
 
 "Juventus, I am Stella. I saw you when they 
 brought you in. I have been planning ever since 
 to save you. I think they mean to kill you. One of 
 them wants money so much, he may keep them from 
 it. But do as I say. Here are overalls, a workman s 
 blouse, and an old hat. Put them on over your 
 uniform. Here is a spade. Take it and follow me. 
 They are digging graves, behind the house, for two 
 who were shot. They are afraid the place will be 
 searched in the morning, and they must bury them 
 now. They needed another man to help in the 
 digging, and I said I would fetch him from close 
 
236 DOME STIC US. 
 
 by. You must dig ; they will not dare say a word. 
 They will want you to go when the digging is done, 
 because they will let no one into the secret of their 
 having imprisoned you here. I will pay you when 
 you quit the work, and you will walk out free." 
 
 " But, Stella," said Juventus, who was already 
 equipped in his disguise, " why cannot I walk out 
 now ? " 
 
 " Go," said she, in a quivering whisper, " but then 
 they will kill me for your escape." 
 
 " Pardon me, my brave Stella," said Juventus, " I 
 am only half myself. I will do what you say. Nay, 
 I will not I will go back to the vault unless I 
 know that you will be safe. May they not, in any 
 case, suspect you of aiding my flight ? " 
 
 " No, no," said Stella. " I had a key to the door, 
 they did not know of. I have left it inside, on 
 the floor. They will think you found it ; I have un 
 fastened the grating, here in front, from below. 
 That will account for your getting out." 
 
 " But they will want you to show the man whom 
 you got to help in the digging." 
 
 " I have a good friend who will swear he did it, if 
 need be. No, they will never suspect me. Juventus," 
 and her whisper was still more quivering, " one of 
 the men who was shot was my husband ; he is dead ; 
 he was good to me when he was himself I was 
 as fierce for revenge as any of them they think I 
 am now but why should you be killed or harmed ? 
 you saved my life I am only paying a debt; but 
 quick come now." 
 
DANGERS AND DELIVERANCES. 
 
 237 
 
 Taking him again by the hand and ascending 
 the stairs, she led him, in the dark, to the rear door; 
 a single descending step brought them into the little 
 space of ground behind the house, enclosed by high 
 board fences, where two men were digging, side by 
 side. The coming of Juventus with his spade was 
 evidently expected, and his falling into the hard 
 work, with vigor, was accepted in silence. 
 
 The night was dark and rain was falling, so that 
 he could not see the faces of his co-workers, but he 
 dug with all his might, thankful that in case of any 
 miscarriage of Stella s plan, he had a new weapon in 
 his hand, his sword and pistols having been taken 
 from him at his capture. At the moment, he was 
 more anxious for Stella than for himself, knowing 
 that her safety depended on the successful issue of 
 her stratagem. Accordingly, he put into his task 
 all of the dogged persistence of the class of which 
 he was, for the time being, an ally, and the two 
 graves were soon dug to their proper depth. He 
 paused, resting on his spade, and awaited the next 
 movement with an intense apprehension which could 
 not have been concealed but for the darkness of the 
 night. 
 
 To his inexpressible relief, after a whispered word 
 from one of his fellow-diggers to Stella, who mean 
 while handed to the speaker a heavy key, she thrust 
 into his hand a bit of paper, representing a fraction 
 of a sestertium, and the ruffian with the key 
 motioned Juventus to follow. He led the way, in 
 silence, through the long hall, until they reached 
 
238 
 
 DOMESTIC US. 
 
 the street door, which he unlocked and opened, just 
 wide enough to permit the egress of Juventus, who 
 walked forth into the dark and silent street, a free 
 man. 
 
 Keeping fast hold of his trusty spade, he went, 
 with rapid strides, toward the main thoroughfares, 
 exciting no observation, and encountering few per 
 sons, as the night was well advanced, and the citizens 
 did not care to be abroad in these troublous times. 
 
 He was seized with an irresistible longing to see 
 Prima. On the morrow he must resume the duty 
 of his mission, so strangely interrupted, and, per 
 haps, be ordered to a distance. The events which 
 had crowded themselves into this single day, be 
 tween sunrise and midnight, were so strange ; his 
 double deliverance from a cruel death, or from a 
 great danger, seemed so signal a blessing ; the good 
 part he had been able to take in the suppression of 
 the insurrection was such a wonderful opportunity 
 of service, that he was hardly able to believe these 
 things were all embraced within the compass of a 
 few hours. He must tell the story, at once, to her 
 for whom his life had been so signally spared, and 
 in the intense excitement of his feelings, was car 
 ried so far beyond his real strength that it seemed 
 to him an easy thing to overcome the distance 
 which separated him from the dwelling of the 
 Prince. 
 
 In fact, it was a long and weary way to traverse, 
 at so late an hour, for one in the physical condition 
 in which the day s vicissitudes had left Juventus 
 
DANGERS AND DELll ERAXCES. 239 
 
 But finding that in the upper part of the city, on its 
 western side, removed from the scene of the riots, 
 the public vehicles were running, and that the last 
 northward trip for the night was about to be made, 
 lie was enabled, by the use of the bit of currency 
 which Stella had placed in his hand, to be conveyed 
 to a point near the round tower described to him 
 by Prima, and thence he came, without difficulty, 
 to the willow trees and the gate they overshadowed. 
 
 The house faced toward the West and North ; as 
 Juventus entered the gate, he saw that a light was 
 burning in a window of its front, left open for the 
 chance breezes of the summer night. As he paused 
 on the gravel-path, the wind, which had risen in the 
 night and changed from its rainy quarter, blew off 
 the lingering clouds, and far up, in the dim heavens, 
 he caught the distant flicker of the North Star. At 
 this moment, at the open casement, he saw with 
 throbbing heart, a white-robed figure, and there fell 
 upon his ear the words, breathed toward the far- 
 off orb, 
 
 " Good-night, Juventus." 
 
 " Good-night, Prima," was his quick response. 
 
 He saw her start ; he heard her sudden cry of 
 wonder; and fearing she might be overcome by the 
 startling sound, called with louder voice, to declare 
 his presence, and to reassure her perturbed spirit. 
 
 Then he said, " If it is too late, do not let any 
 one be disturbed; I could not go without greeting 
 you, even if the greeting be a farewell." 
 
 " No one will be disturbed," said Prima, " and no 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 one would forgive you had you not come. Mamma 
 is still astir. In these fearful times we have not 
 been able to sleep; we will all come down and 
 meet you at the door; wait only a few moments." 
 
 The long day s work was done. Its terrible suc 
 cessive strains had been met, and they were over 
 past. The quiet home of his betrothed had been 
 gained in safety ; her dear voice had welcomed him ; 
 no further need of strength, of will, of courage, of 
 excitement, to bear him up for any deed of daring 
 or duty. The reaction came with sudden force, and 
 as the Prince and the Princess with Prima, all 
 aroused and eager to receive the unexpected visitor, 
 threw open their door for his entrance, he could 
 only take one tottering step forward, and then fell 
 senseless at their feet. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE VIA SEXTA. 
 
 AT last, after four years of fighting, the strife was 
 ended. The last shot had been fired ; the final 
 surrender made; and the Sisterhood was saved. 
 Following swiftly upon the suppression of the riots 
 in the Imperial City, came the issue of the impend 
 ing battle upon which, more than upon any pre 
 vious conflict, hung the issues of the war. It had 
 resulted, not in the destruction of the invading 
 army, or its capture, but in checking its advance 
 and forcing its withdrawal to the nether side of the 
 line, there to re-intrench itself for new resistance; 
 while, over the wide theatre of the strife, renewed 
 hostilities and campaigns on a more extended scale 
 gave still vaster proportions than ever before to the 
 gigantic struggle. 
 
 Months earlier, with much hesitation and after 
 many sad reverses, the real issue had been reached 
 and the blow struck whereby the knot, which states 
 manship could not untie, and which contention had 
 only tightened, was severed by the sword. As a final 
 measure of war, and after a hundred clays of warning, 
 the word had g<>iv,- forth which, with the dawn of the 
 new year, proclaimed the enfranchisement of a race. 
 1 6 241 
 
242 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 At last, the leaders, long waited for and trained 
 by the lessons of the defeats which those who went 
 before them had suffered, as well as by the victories 
 they themselves had won, came to the front, to finish 
 the bloody work. Then, under the supreme com 
 mand of one patient, unflinching, steady will, the 
 dread issue was forced to its final trial, and the day 
 dawned when the old flag floated once more over all 
 the rescued realm. 
 
 The youth and vigor of Juventus had saved him 
 from more than a temporary shock to his nervous 
 system, as the result of his day spent among the 
 infuriated rioters of the Imperial City. The care of 
 the Princess and Prima restored him to health even 
 more quickly than suited them, for his impatience 
 to resume his distant command outstripped their 
 loving anxieties for his complete recovery, and took 
 him from them, before they were quite ready to 
 trust him to himself. His services on the eventful 
 day were duly recognized and honorably men 
 tioned, and by the timely intervention of the Prince, 
 prompted by the papers he found in the possession 
 of Juventus, the special service on which he came 
 to the Imperial City suffered no harm. The secret 
 of his strange deliverance he confided only to 
 Prima, fearing that if entrusted to other ears some 
 possible danger might come to his deliverer. All 
 that was generally known was that he had been left 
 wounded in the street, and had, afterwards, made 
 his way to the house of the Prince. 
 
THE VIA SEXT.1. 243 
 
 The war ended, the great contending armies were 
 disbanded. In the strange and almost instantaneous 
 transformation from serried hostile ranks to peace 
 ful tillers of the soil, or toilers in all the countless 
 arts, and industries, and professions in which, the 
 broad land over, the labor of her sons was engaged, 
 the world saw a new sight. Peace, as with an 
 enchanter s touch, dissolved the whole hideous array 
 and enginery of wai . 
 
 So have we seen, from some high peak, the 
 black, storm-charged billows of cloud, heaving and 
 surging with seemingly inexhaustible stores of 
 pent-up wrath, on a sudden melt away at the sove 
 reign glance and beam of the outbursting sun. 
 
 Juventus was glad to return unharmed and with 
 a brilliant record to his accustomed work as a 
 civilian. He found, without difficulty, a new open 
 ing in the activities which immediately received a 
 fresh impulse at the restoration of peace, and was 
 soon regularly employed, as the head of a depart 
 ment, in an important industrial enterprise. 
 
 He pleaded with Prima for a speedy marriage. 
 He thought he had reason on his side when he 
 urged that hostilities being ended, engagements 
 should cease, and union should be the paramount 
 idea. He had saved, out of his pay, enough to pro 
 vide for the fitting-up of the modest establishment 
 which he proposed. He unfolded his plans to Prima 
 with the courage of a veteran campaigner. To con 
 dense in a few words the conversations and discus 
 sions of several evenings, he had projected an alii- 
 
244 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 ance with a comrade who had served with him in 
 the war, and who owned a house in the Via Sexta, 
 a thoroughfare which, though next in order and 
 parallel to the Via Quinta, was separated from it by 
 an impassable gulf, in respect of gentility and of 
 permitted residence, under the rules of Societas. 
 
 It was not, however, at that time, as to any part 
 of it, under a special ban of disrepute, and was 
 largely devoted to the uses of small traders, and as 
 yet unvisited by the marvelous methods of upper- 
 level locomotion, to which, later on, it was appro 
 priated. The house was occupied on the ground 
 floor by the comrade, the front portion being avail 
 able for his business as an engraver and carver in 
 metals, and the rear for the living apartments of 
 himself and wife. Overhead, was a suite of rooms 
 of which Juventus would become the tenant, and 
 which could be fitted-up to suit the needs of Prima 
 and himself. 
 
 Prima had not faced the cannon s mouth on the 
 battle-field, but she had the quiet courage needful 
 to brave the galling fusilade to which she knew she 
 would be subjected if she took up the line of march 
 to which Juventus invited. To marry a poor man 
 whose fortune was all to be made, and whose daily 
 earnings must suffice for their whole support, to live 
 outside of the limits of Societas, to exchange, for 
 the friendly greetings of its votaries, their sneers 
 and shrugs, and ill-concealed perhaps openly 
 expressed disdain, none but a brave girl would 
 dare. And such an one was Prima. Juventus dis- 
 
THE VIA SEXTA. 345 
 
 closed his whole scheme. He figured out, to a 
 sestertium, the yearly, monthly, daily cost of the 
 living, and brought his practical mathematics to 
 bear on the problem of making both ends so meet 
 that there would be considerable lapping over. 
 
 " I have enough on hand," said he, " to make 
 those bare rooms, with the added touch of your 
 taste and skill, as attractive as if they were in a 
 wing of the bravest palace on earth ; as good books 
 can be put on pine shelves daintily draped, as in 
 the grandest library ; as good cheer can be found 
 in the cosy corner where our board is to be spread, 
 as in the most luxurious banqueting-hall ; there can 
 be place always for two, beside ourselves, whether 
 our table be square or round, and if we cannot 
 pour libations of sparkling Falernian into gemmed 
 goblets, we can provide from some honest, though 
 rougher vintage for the guests we entertain. A man 
 surely has a right to take some risks in the 
 line which I have marked out. So long as I can 
 earn enough, and more than enough, for our sup 
 port, in this frugal way, why should we not begin at 
 once the journey of our married life?" 
 
 " Mamma thinks," said Prima, " and often says, that 
 girls who have been brought up in luxury lose a 
 great deal by never having the opportunity of 
 beginning at the beginning, as so many of the very 
 best people did who have liberal homes in their later 
 days, to which they grew up gradually. For children 
 to commence where their parents leave off, seems 
 to her to be burning the candle at the wrong end. 
 
246 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 There is nothing more to be had if you have every 
 thing at once. And then it seems to happen, so 
 often, that they who commence at the very top have 
 to come down to the very bottom, or unpleasantly 
 near it, without the preparation of a previous expe 
 rience. There must be a great deal of pleasure in 
 making one s way from small beginnings. For my 
 own part I don t want to start as a dowager." 
 
 " I have no fear," said Juventus, " that we shall 
 not move as rapidly as may be desirable toward 
 greater comfort than we may find at first ; but to 
 keep within the bounds which are indispensable now, 
 will require some sacrifice, and if what I am propos 
 ing is to be a trial, I will not ask you to assent. I 
 will wait as long as you require; not as patiently, 
 perhaps, as you could wish." 
 
 " Possibly," said Prima, " we could do a little 
 missionary work, by way of setting an example to 
 some of these other young people, who run to the 
 very edge of the sea of matrimony, and then rush 
 back, because they are afraid to venture into the 
 waves without having the life-preserver of a fortune 
 tied about them. Of course," she said, demurely, 
 " I must see this thing in the light of a positive 
 duty." 
 
 " You will do what I ask ? I am sure you will ! " 
 said Juventus, with a whole sunrise of hope in his 
 eyes. 
 
 " I will," said Prima ; and it was a bargain, not 
 signed, to be sure, but sealed in a sufficiently bind 
 ing way, according to the immemorial usage of 
 
THE VIA SEXTA. 
 
 247 
 
 Magna Patria and other realms, and to the satisfac 
 tion of both the contracting parties. 
 
 " And what now, Prima ? " asked Gloriosa, when 
 they met, for the first time, after the event I have 
 just recorded. 
 
 " Juventus and I are to be married next month," 
 said Prima. " He has found excellent employment, 
 and has taken some very nice rooms in the Via 
 Sexta." 
 
 " The Via Sexta ! " cried Gloriosa, throwing up 
 both hands, heavy with their sparkling, gold-encased 
 diamonds and rubies, in a way that expressed unut 
 terable horror. 
 
 "Yes," said Prima; " you could hardly expect him 
 to take a palace on the Via Quinta, considering that 
 he only earns, just now, less than two hundred 
 sestertia a month." 
 
 "And you are going to be married on that ? " 
 
 " Why not ? It is enough to begin on. The rooms 
 are lovely. They are over the shop of an engraver 
 who served in the war with Juventus. His wife is 
 a most capable little woman, and she will supply all 
 we want, and keep our one servant, besides." 
 
 " This is horrible, absolutely horrible!" said Glor 
 iosa. " You are going to destroy yourself. Why not 
 wait till he can support you decently?" 
 
 " He can support me decently now," said Prima. 
 " He is in love with me and I am in love with him. 
 He earns enough to keep us both, in a simple way. 
 I can help him in his work. I am ready to share his 
 
248 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 fortunes, and I cannot see why we should wait on 
 the whims of other people when doing as we prefer 
 helps us, and does not harm them." 
 
 " It is madness," said Gloriosa. " Think of what 
 you have been accustomed to, and what you are en 
 joying, even now, luxury, or comfort, at least, 
 and the height of respectability, although, just at this 
 moment, you are off the Avenue. And now you 
 want to sacrifice yourself for a man who has nothing. 
 
 " He has everything," said Prima, " except money, 
 and that will come, in good time. I am making no 
 sacrifice in casting in my lot with him. I am not 
 losing, but gaining. What did I read, only the 
 other day, in the rude French of an old chanson, 
 earlier than Charlemagne a single line which tells 
 the whole truth, for all time 
 
 " l Li cuers d un horn vaut tout Vor d un pais! 
 1 The heart of a man is worth all the gold of a land. 
 We do not live up to this barbaric standard. With 
 us, the love of gold eats at the very core. The 
 heart of a man is thrown into the scale, against 
 money, to be outweighed and held for naught. 
 Come what may, I will stand by my choice of a 
 man s heart." 
 
 "A man s heart, without a man s purse, will fur 
 nish nothing but sentiment which pays no bills," 
 said Gloriosa. 
 
 " I know that well enough," said Prima, " and I 
 have seen girls rush foolishly into marriage, to find 
 out their mistake too late, if not too soon. But, 
 Gloriosa, is it not true that, almost always, the risk 
 
THE VIA SEXTA. 249 
 
 they took was of the man and not of his means? 
 That is my risk and I have measured it. If Juven- 
 tus were as rich as the richest, I would still want to 
 marry not his money but himself; and how if a man 
 loses his money, as so many do and must ? Sup 
 pose Novus \\\re to lose his fortune " 
 
 " I am independent," said Gloriosa, quickly and 
 somewhat sharply. " There was a settlement before 
 we were married. That was a condition." 
 
 Primawas sorry she had made this personal allu 
 sion for she should have remembered that the ties 
 of domesticity were said to sit very lightly on 
 Novus, and it was matter of general knowledge that 
 Gloriosa s recognized independence was asserted in a 
 variety of ways. 
 
 " Forgive me," she said, " I had no right to ask 
 questions. All I meant was that where a man 
 has nothing to give but his heart, and his best en 
 deavors, a girl may take the risk of marriage, if he 
 is able to earn daily bread for himself and any one 
 dependent upon him. This is a risk people are 
 taking every day, in humbler spheres than yours 
 and mine, and are we to be shut out from a kind of 
 happiness they are permitted to enjoy ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Gloriosa, " of course we are, unless we 
 are willing to go down to their level. We are just 
 as much shut out from what you call their happi 
 ness as they are from what, I suppose, they call our 
 extravagance. Of course, you can degrade your 
 self, if you choose, but you must take the conse 
 quences." 
 
250 
 
 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 " There is no degradation," retorted Prima; " I can 
 live as pure and noble a life in a humble place, and 
 among poor people, as I could in the Via Quinta, 
 and I am glad of the opportunity of doing it. 
 What right have you now, or had I once, to anything 
 more than the poorest ? Good fortune and great 
 fortunes seem to me, more and more, purely acci 
 dental, except when they come from one s own 
 creative efforts. I would rather have a single ses- 
 tertium in my hand that I had earned, or that some 
 one I loved had earned for love of me, than a hun 
 dred that I might get by gift or inheritance." 
 
 " What nonsense, Prima ! Do you mean you would 
 rather enlist under Domesticus, and go out to ser 
 vice, than live at home as you do, or as you have 
 done ? " 
 
 " No. Although I would even do that, if I could 
 do nothing else and had to gain my own living, 
 before I would lie down and die of inaction. There 
 is not the wide difference in service, or work, which 
 you imagine. What is the real difference between 
 putting food into a child s mouth to nourish his 
 body, as any nurse may do when she puts a bib 
 under his chin and a spoon in his fingers, and put 
 ting high thoughts into his mind, as the great pre 
 late did when he chronicled the wanderings of 
 Ulysses for the heir of the Gallic throne, and placed 
 an immortal classic in his hand ? " 
 
 " All the difference," said Gloriosa, " that there is 
 between the lowest and the highest of any kind of 
 effort." 
 
THE VIA SEXTA. 251 
 
 " Precisely," said Prima ; " but the same in kind, 
 essentially; and the great advantage we enjoy is that 
 our service, if we arc called to render it, may be of 
 the finer grade and grain. I can make beds, and 
 make bread, thanks to old Patella who has taught 
 me, but I can do other things which rank higher 
 than these humble ministries, and are more elevating, 
 and command better rewards. In their place, the 
 lowliest labor and the lowest laborer stand on their 
 own merits, and if their work is good and true they 
 should be respected accordingly. I really believe 
 one reason why this never-ending question of 
 Domesticus is so troublesome, is because so many 
 people have never stopped to think of anything ex 
 cept the obligations of those who serve, taking 
 no account of the reciprocal obligation of those who 
 are served. The best-bred men and women are the 
 first to acknowledge this, and I know very well that, 
 shiftless and short-sighted and slow-handed, as the 
 emissaries of Domesticus may be, they are quick to 
 discern the difference between true gentility and its 
 counterfeit, between a real lady and a make-believe 
 one." 
 
 " For all that, Prima, I think you are very un 
 grateful to talk as you do. I cannot fancy, marriage 
 aside, you would really prefer a life of labor to living 
 at home." 
 
 " I do not say I would. It is lovely to feel you 
 are free in your father s house, but this world is full 
 of changes, and it is well, I think, for every one to 
 have in themselves, and to be sure they have, the 
 
252 
 
 DO ATE STIC US. 
 
 will and capacity to make their own way, in spite of 
 circumstance and adverse fate. I tell you, Gloriosa, 
 the very first time I ever tried to support myself, 
 just a tiny little bit, I felt a kind of satisfaction in 
 being able to do it that was like a new sense of life." 
 
 " What in the world did you do ? " 
 
 " I just wrote out, almost in his own words, a wild 
 sea story that one of the old fishermen told me, 
 when we were down at the coast, and I worked in a 
 description of his cabin, with every queer thing that 
 was in it and about it, and had the good luck to 
 have it accepted where such things are turned into 
 money. Of course, it was not much, but it was 
 mine." 
 
 " Well, Prima, plain as your path may seem to 
 you, I cannot follow you in it. If you are going to 
 ostracize yourself, and go outside the pale of Societas, 
 go you must, but nobody will call on you in the 
 Via Sexta." 
 
 " We shall see," said Prima. " I shall not ex 
 pect any pretty little men, nor any imitation ladies, 
 but Juventus has friends who will not desert him, 
 and I thought I had some who would not desert 
 me." 
 
 " You are so unreasonable," said Gloriosa. " Im 
 agine my chariot at a shop-door for an afternoon 
 call!" 
 
 " I shall not tax my imagination at the expense of 
 your friendship," said Prima. 
 
 " It is not a question of friendship," said Gloriosa, 
 rising to depart. " It is a question of social order. 
 
THE VIA SEXTA. 
 
 253 
 
 You want to set Societas at defiance, and nobody is 
 strong enough for that. Anything, or anywhere, in 
 a side street will do, but over a shop is almost as 
 bad as in the slums." 
 
 " I am not going to be angry with you," said 
 Prima, " no matter how ill you treat me, but you 
 know very well the Via Sexta is not in the 
 slums. Nor do I want to set Societas at defiance. 
 How absurd for me, or for any one else, to run a tilt 
 against that great goddess whom all the gay world 
 worships. Only I will not be pressed into her hard 
 service. No one can love better than I do the friend 
 liness of true social intercourse. It is the very life 
 of life. There are plenty of men and women in the 
 train of Societas who are as good as gold, and as true 
 as steel dear friends of yours and mine whose 
 praise is always on our lips. I have no quarrel with 
 them, but solely with the system of which they make 
 themselves a part, and which they uphold in what 
 seems to me its vicious methods. There is as much 
 difference between genuine social friendship and its 
 counterfeit in the circles of Societas, as there is be 
 tween the white and red of Nature on the cheek of 
 a young girl in the morning sunshine, and the chalk 
 and rouge of the tiring-room, made ghastly by the 
 glare of the footlights." 
 
 Gloriosa shrugged her ample shoulders. " If you 
 are going into a tirade against cosmetics, I don t 
 know where you will stop. The next thing you 
 will disavow your belief in the three Graces. But, 
 Prima, I must be going. I am making visits, and 
 
254 
 
 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 could not have stopped so long with you but that I 
 ran short of Novus tablets. At my last call I had 
 to leave five of his ; to be sure, it was an extra-sized 
 family, married daughters living at home, and all 
 that" 
 
 " Considering that Novus never actually calls any 
 where, under any circumstances," said Prima, " leav 
 ing five of his tablets seems like a great deal of fic 
 tion founded on no fact. But since when has there 
 been such an increase in the number of tablets dis 
 tributable at front doors ? " 
 
 " The edict is only a little more rigidly enforced 
 this season," said Gloriosa. " It has been duly pro 
 mulgated by that high-priestess of Societas, Bona 
 Forma, who is charged with the regulation of these 
 matters. Societas will not be tied to a constitution 
 or a code, but she makes and unmakes general 
 rules, and this is rule number twelve million and 
 twenty-six. I know it by heart. It requires that in 
 the interchange of tablets one must be left by, and 
 for, and upon, every person of proper age, enrolled 
 and capable of duty in the ranks of Societas, pro 
 vided that the tablets of gentlewomen shall be left 
 only for, and upon, persons of the above description 
 of their own sex, and the tablets of men for, and 
 upon, persons of the like description of both sexes, 
 unmarried men excepted. Of course, everybody 
 whose tablet is left is not supposed to have called 
 in person. It is simply saying you called when 
 you didn t call ; but that is all right by every rule of 
 Societas, written or unwritten. And now, Prima, I 
 
THE VIA SEXTA. 
 
 255 
 
 have given you fair warning, and I mean what I 
 have said. You are going to put yourself out of 
 the pale, and as long as you persist in your insane 
 ways we must treat you accordingly. I don t 
 believe you will be as bad as you threaten, so I 
 wish you good-bye, and a better mind." 
 
 " Good-bye," said Prima, and they parted with a 
 kiss, in which the fervor of their old friendship 
 seemed, to each of them, to have been checked 
 by a sudden chill. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A MARRIAGE NOT A LA MODE. 
 
 TUVENTUS and Primawere married in the early 
 I days of Autumn, in a quiet way, quite at vari 
 ance with the prevailing fashion of the Imperial 
 City in the matter of weddings. There were a few 
 friends, a few flowers, and a few presents. Gloriosa 
 sent her greetings, in spite of her disapproval, from 
 the sea-side metropolis where she was revolving in a 
 whirligig of festivities, almost as exciting and as 
 exacting as those of the Imperial City at the height 
 of its gayest season, and with them, a colossal 
 souvenir which Prima thought would seem strangely 
 out of keeping with the modest conditions of Via 
 Sexta. 
 
 " How very apt people are to resemble their pres 
 ents!" said the Princess to Prima, when this elabor 
 ate piece was unpacked. "Gloriosa is nothing if 
 not beyond bounds, and this efflorescent epergne, 
 with its outspreading branches, calls for a table 
 at least six feet wide and pulled out for fourteen 
 people." 
 
 " It is lovely in her to have sent it," said Prima, 
 " and certainly it is very handsome. I shall hope 
 to be able to live up to it some day. But I am so 
 256 
 
A MARRIAGE NOT A LA MODE. 
 
 257 
 
 glad that, as we arc placed just now, we are rid of 
 the conventional present, and that Societas has 
 levied no assessment for my benefit on any of her 
 members. How charming are these little remem 
 brances which express real affection! I had no 
 idea so many of my old friends would keep me in 
 mind; and nothing touches me more than this won 
 derful catch-bag which old Patella has worked, with 
 its marvels of embroidery." 
 
 " I wonder where Stella is," said the Princess. " I 
 would be so glad to have her here." 
 
 Patella had tried, at the instance of Prima, to 
 discover the whereabouts of Stella, but thus far in 
 vain. She had left the house, and apparently the 
 neighborhood, in which she had lived after her 
 marriage, and no one could be found who knew 
 whither she had gone. 
 
 The wedding over, and the short trip which fol 
 lowed it ended, the newly-married pair took posses 
 sion of their home in the Via Sexta, not without 
 many strivings of heart on the part of the Prince 
 and the Little Lady, to whom, in the changed con 
 dition of their affairs, the marriage of Prima and 
 her departure from their loving care and compan 
 ionship, almost empty-handed, and to so lowly a 
 home, was the sorest trial they had encountered. 
 
 The Prince had, at first, been unwilling to accede 
 to the plans of Juventus. He foresaw many objec 
 tions and difficulties, even after the Princess had 
 been won over to the side of the adventurous lovers. 
 7 
 
2 cj3 DO ME STIC US. 
 
 He pleaded for a side street, and thought the 
 combined effect of the Via Sexta and the shop 
 would be fatal to the social prospects of the young 
 couple. 
 
 " I thought so, myself," said the Princess, " but 
 Juventus declares he has walked a hundred miles in 
 the side streets, and explored innumerable houses ; 
 the result is he must spend the bulk of his pay for 
 rent, or go where that single item will not eat up all 
 his earnings. He wants to be within walking dis 
 tance of his work, and his whole future hinges on 
 the question of rent. We are all the time crying 
 out against the obstacles the high prices put in 
 the way of the marrying of young people. Here 
 you have a couple with courage enough to accept 
 the only possible solution." 
 
 " If the house must be in the Via Sexta, I wish 
 it might be on a corner, with the entrance on the 
 side street," said the Prince; "that would be a kind 
 of compromise." 
 
 " You will never get Juventus, nor Prima, to make 
 compromises for the sake of their footing with Socie- 
 tas. They will hold their ground and their one 
 flight up, against a world in arms. A girl may go 
 from the Via Quinta, three thousand miles, to a cat 
 tle ranch in Ultima Occidente, and her bravery will 
 be applauded. Is the quiet, stay-at-home courage 
 which takes Prima a single block off, to be fol 
 lowed with hisses and cat-calls ? " 
 
 " It surely will be," replied the Prince, "because 
 Societas draws her strictest lines at just such points 
 
A MARRIAGE NOT A LA AfODE. 
 
 259 
 
 as this, and forbids the bans where a couple pro 
 pose to live without her limits, in order to live 
 within their means." 
 
 "In other words," cried the Princess, " Socictas 
 will permit every sacrifice at her own shrine, but 
 none at the old altar fires of the heart ! " 
 
 " Of course," said the Prince, " there is no more 
 sentiment about Societas than there is about a dia 
 mond-broker, but no end of shrewdness and prac 
 tical wisdom. Aside from all that, these children 
 are taking a considerable risk. Juventus may be 
 stricken down with illness many a man is." 
 
 " He is not very likely to be," said the Princess. 
 " He went through the war without any serious 
 injury ; he is in good health, and will be much 
 more likely to keep so if he has a comfortable 
 home and regular hours, a bright fireside and a 
 loving wife." 
 
 " He may be killed, or meet with some accident." 
 
 " Then Prima can come to us ; besides, there are 
 the great guilds which provide for such emergen 
 cies, and Juventus has already made arrangements 
 with them." 
 
 The Prince suggested that in the account current 
 of married people the most formidable debit item 
 might be a baby. 
 
 The Little Lady had never been frightened by a 
 baby, and never meant to be. Twins had no terrors 
 for her. 
 
 The Prince was silenced, though not convinced ; 
 and he gave Prima away, with some misgivings, 
 
2 6o DOMESTICUS. 
 
 and yet satisfied, in his heart of hearts, that 
 the pledges Juventus had given to fortune when 
 his marriage vows were uttered would surely be 
 redeemed. 
 
 Brighter days were at hand for the Prince. 
 
 The new era of peace and prosperity which fol 
 lowed the ending of the strife brought with it 
 a great increase in the values of property, and 
 opened a wide door for every description of renewed 
 activity. 
 
 The great tidal wave of inflation, following on 
 the permanent exchange of paper promises for 
 gold coin, lifted things which had been supposed 
 to be mere wreckage and drift-wood into values 
 which were as unexpected as they were excessive. 
 In the Imperial City, vast public improvements were 
 projected and carried forward, especially in the 
 quarter which included the lands of the Prince; and 
 as the sequel of what seemed, at the outset, the un 
 reasoning obstinacy of the Little Lady, resulting in 
 the withholding of these lands from sale, the time 
 came when their new value made it easy to provide 
 for the bulk of his whole outstanding indebtedness, 
 after applying his other means of payment to the 
 satisfaction of his creditors. 
 
 Some fortunate events, among which was the recla 
 mation of a large quantity of the staple product of the 
 nether side of the invisible line, shipped to him by his 
 chief debtors, just at the breaking out of the strife, 
 and so intercepted that it had been held, during all the 
 
A MARRIAGE NOT A LA MODE. 2 6l 
 
 years of the conflict, without capture or destruction, 
 aided to swell his assets. By the good manage 
 ment of Vindex, the happy day came at last after 
 long and weary waiting, when the whole heavy load 
 could be lifted. The outcome was far better than 
 even he had ever dared to- hope. The Prince would 
 be stripped, to be sure, of his wealth, but he would be 
 out of debt, and the palace was saved, so that he 
 could secure it to the Princess, free and clear, and 
 his new business alliances were such as to ensure 
 ample means for his comfortable living, and the pos 
 sible nucleus of a fresh fortune. 
 
 The debts all satisfied, including the timely ad 
 vances made by Vindex, at the time of the failure, 
 for the purchase of the claim of Furax, the old juris 
 consult was able to assure the Little Lady that she 
 was the owner, in her own right, of the home she 
 had loved so much ; that the balance due every 
 creditor was satisfied out of the proceeds of the other 
 lands, and that there was enough left to represent 
 her dower right, which the Prince, and not the credi 
 tors, could now make good to her by a conveyance 
 of the palace on the Via Quinta. 
 
 All this she understood when she united with 
 Assignatus, as occasion required, in signing the 
 deeds of the lands, as they were now sold, from time 
 to time. But the matter of the furniture she could 
 not fully comprehend. And before she would con 
 sent to re-enter the palace as its owner, she must see 
 Vindex face to face once more, and learn the whole 
 truth. The furniture, although hers from the day 
 
262 DOMEST1CUS. 
 
 and date of the bill of sale, she had never touched. 
 The palace had been advantageously rented and 
 well tenanted during most of the time since the out 
 cry took place, and a due proportion of the rent had 
 been religiously reserved, by the vigilance of Vin- 
 dex, for the Princess, as representing the use of her 
 furniture by the tenant, but even this she would 
 not accept. Now that the whole tangle was about 
 to be unravelled, she must be sure there was no 
 dishonest nor doubtful thread in the confused mass. 
 Vindex had met the Little Lady frequently dur 
 ing the long interval between his first repulse in the 
 matter of the dower right, and the present better time, 
 but he had made no progress in gaining her over to 
 his views. On the contrary, she had nipped in the 
 bud a project he had hoped to mature for a compro 
 mise with the Prince s creditors by paying sixty per 
 cent, of his debts. After satisfying himself that it 
 would be accepted by the great body of the creditors, 
 he had broached the subject cautiously to the Prin 
 cess, whose consent was necessary, as the execution 
 of the scheme involved the sale of the lands, free of 
 her dower, which he meant to provide for as a part 
 of the settlement. When he had unfolded his plan, 
 the Princess asked, first of all : 
 
 " Would such a settlement be honest? " 
 " Most assuredly," said Vindex ; " men who fail 
 for over a million are not expected to pay in full." 
 1 Then the Prince would never be out of debt?" 
 " Yes ; he would be entirely out of debt ; he 
 would have satisfied all claims and be free to take a 
 
A AMA AY./oY-. NOT A LA MODE. 263 
 
 fresh start. It is in the interest of the whole com 
 munity that this should be the method of giving 
 honest debtors new opportunities." 
 
 " Suppose, by new opportunity, the honest debtor 
 retrieves his losses and becomes able to pay the 
 deficiency; is he not bound to do it ?" 
 
 " No," said Vindex, " he is not bound." 
 
 " Legally, not, I suppose," said the Princess, " but 
 in honor and good conscience ? " 
 
 " No, again. Because there is no standard by 
 which to determine a fancied obligation resting on 
 honor or conscience, and not on right as fixed by 
 law. A debtor whose debt is once discharged never 
 owes that debt again, or any part of it. If, after 
 ward, he is so placed that, without injustice to 
 others, he can gratify his particular sense of obliga 
 tion by giving his former creditors the bal mce of 
 their discharged claims, this is his own affair. He 
 cannot gauge his action by anything save his in 
 dividual choice. The community does not require 
 or expect it of him, and he comes under no dis 
 credit or criticism for not doing it, because, in the 
 long run, and under ordinary conditions, it is im 
 possible, in a single life, with all its many responsi 
 bilities and vicissitudes, for a man to re-open what 
 is closed, and to add to the necessity of meeting 
 present demands the luxury of providing for those 
 which have been cancelled in the past. If the law 
 of the land discharges a man from his debts, and a 
 supposed social law holds him undischarged, the 
 honest debtor who has paid all he could, and whose 
 
264 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 after-acquired means are needed for his family and 
 his new engagements, will never be freed, either in 
 the eye of his own conscience, or in the regard of 
 his fellows." 
 
 " I see," said the Princess; " it is purely a question 
 of choice, depending on the circumstances of the 
 individual." 
 
 "Just so," said Vindex. 
 
 " But for all that, better pay the whole than a part, 
 if possible." 
 
 " Of course, if the means exist." 
 
 " I believe they will exist for us," said the Prin 
 cess. "And I would rather wait and take all the 
 chances than compromise with the creditors now 
 and leave any question for the future, after the fresh 
 start has been taken. Depend upon it, the money 
 will come, and then we shall pay all and be wiser 
 for the future. What does Novus call it when he 
 says that something that is going to happen happens 
 a month or so before it happens ? " 
 
 " I suppose he says, in the dialect of his venture 
 some calling, that it has been discounted. " 
 
 " Yes, that is it. Well, I think the best way to dis 
 count one s debts is to pay them in full as soon as 
 one has the money in hand, and not leave anything 
 for conscience, or honor, or yourself, or other people, 
 to worry about in the future." 
 
 The Little Lady s prediction had now come true, 
 and at last Vindex felt sure that there could be no 
 possible want of accord between her and himself. 
 He responded cheerfully to her summons, which had 
 
A MARRIAGE NOT A LA ^rODE. 2 6$ 
 
 been conveyed by a note requesting him to call on 
 her and receive in person her thanks for all his 
 kindness. 
 
 " Is it quite certain," she asked, after a warm greet 
 ing of the self-constituted and persistent guardian 
 of her rights, " that the Prince is going to be entirely 
 out of debt ? " 
 
 " Absolutely certain," said Vindex. " It is a great 
 deliverance, and I congratulate you." 
 
 " I am sure," said the Princess, " we owe it very 
 much to you, and you must not think me ungrateful, 
 and self-willed, and opinionated, even if I have 
 appeared so. Only where I could not see, I did not 
 lilce to walk. Now I want you to add to all your 
 good offices the final assurance, before we return to 
 the dear old house, that every creditor is paid all 
 that is owing him." 
 
 " Certainly," said Vindex, " that is so." 
 
 " Even Furax ? " said the Princess. 
 
 " Furax be " I grieve to record the fact that the 
 good old jurisconsult had it, for a second, in his 
 over-taxed temper, and on his too tempted tongue, 
 to give utterance to a sentiment which would have 
 been most unseemly and out of place. Fortunately, 
 he checked himself in time, and the words he 
 uttered reached the ears of the Princess in unexcep 
 tionable form. 
 
 " Furax be ing no longer a creditor, has no con 
 cern with the settlement." 
 
 "But he was a creditor," said the Princess, " and 
 the one who made the first trouble and the only 
 
2 66 D OMES TIC US, 
 
 trouble and who sold the furniture; and what I 
 want to know is whether he will get his whole 
 debt ? " 
 
 " His whole debt, and claim, and proceedings, were 
 bought in the beginning, and he was paid off. I 
 bought them myself, for yaur benefit, and paid the 
 money ; I have been repaid, and we have no more 
 to do with Furax, now, than with the man in the 
 moon." 
 
 " I supposed you were at the bottom of the furni 
 ture sale. Prima found it out before I did. Of 
 course, if I had known what you were doing, and 
 that it was all for my benefit, I should not have be 
 haved so foolishly. You must have thought very 
 badly of me for going to the outcry, but I really 
 could not help it." 
 
 " I think it was very natural," said Vindex. 
 
 " And very naughty, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Your naughtiness does not interfere with me 
 half as much as your goodness, your overstrained 
 and over-scrupulous honesty. My dear Princess, I 
 am afraid you are color-blind in this matter of 
 debtor and creditor. Why do you want to know 
 anything more about Furax ? He has been paid." 
 
 " But has he been paid in full ? " 
 
 " He has been paid more than he deserved. He 
 was only too glad when the failure took place to get 
 half his debt, and so would all the creditors have 
 been, could we have paid them at that time." 
 
 "Then the Prince still owes Furax the other half 
 of his debt?" 
 
A MARRIAGE NOT A LA MODE. 2 6/ 
 
 11 He does not owe him a single sesterium," said 
 Vindex. " Pardon my saying it, but you are the most 
 outrageously and provokingly honest woman I ever 
 met. If everybody were like you, we could not get 
 on a step. When a man is willing to take half his 
 debt for the whole, he may sell it; just as you might 
 sell the shawl you have on your shoulders for half 
 its value, if you preferred having the money to keep 
 ing the shawl. When I bought the claim of Furax 
 I became the owner, and whatever was owing him, 
 before I bought it, became due to me." 
 
 "Dear me!" said the Princess. " Then we owe 
 him, and you besides ! " 
 
 " You don t owe him anything, and you don t 
 owe me anything we have both been paid in full." 
 
 " I cannot see how," persisted the Princess, " if 
 neither Furax nor you ever got more than half the 
 debt. Where is Furax?" 
 
 " He is dead," said Vindex. 
 
 " Then we must pay his widow." 
 
 " He was an old bachelor," said Vindex. " That 
 accounts for his being so unfeeling. He had no 
 wife, nor children, nor relations." 
 
 " I never heard of any one who had no relations, 
 so long as he had any money," said the Princess ; 
 "but suppose he really had none, what then ? " 
 
 " Then it would escheat and go to the State, and 
 the politicians would probably contrive to get hold 
 of it and squander it for base purposes." 
 
 " How dreadful " said the Princess. " I never 
 knew before that escheating and cheating meant the 
 
DOMESTICUS. 
 
 same thing. There is no safety except in never 
 owing a debt." 
 
 " That, madam," said Vindex, " is a sentiment 
 which ought to be written, in letters of gold, on all 
 the door posts and lintels of the land." 
 
 "What is to be done ? " said the Princess. " I will 
 never be satisfied till that debt is paid." 
 
 " We will do this," said Vindex, who had perhaps 
 pushed the matter of the entire failure of next of 
 kin of the deceased Furax, as he had the corrup 
 tion of the politicians, somewhat beyond the pos 
 sible reality ; " we will make inquiry, and set 
 apart a sufficient sum to provide for this balance of 
 a debt which is due to nobody. What I want is to 
 get you, and your husband, and children, back into 
 the palace, which there was really never any occa 
 sion for your leaving, but all s well that ends 
 well. " 
 
 "We will go back on the Prince s birthday ; it will 
 come just a week from to-day," said the Little Lady, 
 " and we will have Juventus and Prima with us, and 
 you must certainly join us at dinner, won t you? " 
 
 The invitation was gladly accepted. The old 
 jurisconsult, who had never been captured by the 
 softer charms of the sex, was in love with the hard 
 obstinacy of the Princess. 
 
 " I must reverse the usual method," he said to 
 the Prince, " in dealing with your amiable wife. I 
 censure her to her face, and praise her behind her 
 back. She is the first woman I ever met who is 
 entirely too good for this world." 
 
A MARRIAGE NOT A LA MODE. 269 
 
 " I have thought so for more than a score of 
 years," said the Prince, "and have been only top 
 glad and grateful that she is permitted to stay in it 
 for my particular benefit." 
 
 " Look out never to fail again ; she will want to 
 pay everybody two hundred cents on the dollar." 
 
 "She knows no such word as fail," said the 
 Prince. " and I trust I never shall, again." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 HOME AGAIN. 
 
 r PHE restored family circle, gathered in anticipa- 
 1 tion of a birthday dinner, was a very happy 
 one. The children were radiant with a new sense 
 of delight. Juventus and Prima pleased themselves 
 with the fancy that the renewed warmth and bright 
 ness of the palace were only beams from the same 
 central source which irradiated the narrower precincts 
 of their Via Sexta home. The Prince and Princess 
 were contentedly serene. 
 
 " You and Juventus must break up where you 
 are, and come to live with us," said the Prince to 
 Prima. 
 
 "After a little," said Prima; "we cannot, just yet, 
 bring our minds to the sacrifice involved in leaving 
 the home we have made; and there is another source 
 of embarrassment in deciding on the conflicting 
 claims of half a dozen couples who, as soon as the 
 rumor was about that you were to return here, have 
 been besieging us for the refusal of our apartment 
 We have set a fashion that is going to be followed." 
 
 " Take your own time," said the Prince, " only 
 remember that home, here, will hardly be home 
 without you. But what has become of Vindex? 
 270 
 
HOME AGAIN. 271 
 
 He is usually very prompt, and it is a quarter of 
 an hour past the time." 
 
 Vindex came very late. Another quarter of an 
 hour passed before he entered with warm greetings 
 for all, but with something like a cloud resting on 
 his brow. 
 
 " I am sorry to have kept you waiting, and more 
 sorry for the cause of my delay. I bring bad news. 
 Novus has come to great grief. He has broken 
 to pieces. It has just come out that he has been 
 engaged in the wildest speculations, which have gone 
 frightfully wrong. He has used up all his own 
 means and eveiybody s else he could lay his hands 
 on, including what he had settled on Gloriosa.and has 
 wound up by running away, probably beyond sea." 
 
 " I thought Gloriosa had her marriage portion 
 secured," said Prima. " She told me so herself." 
 
 11 Yes, but Novus contrived by orders in her name, 
 which I fear were forged, to get control of the 
 securities, and they are all pledged for his debts. 
 Something may be saved, but it is a wretched busi 
 ness." 
 
 " It is very sad," said the Prince. " Novus had 
 enough long ago, if he had only been willing to 
 think so." 
 
 " To know when one has enough," said Vindex, 
 " is to be wiser than the wisest. Novus took it into 
 his head that he was predestined by the Fates to be 
 a very rich man ; a ruinous illusion unless they pre 
 destine unlimited cash balances for every day s ven 
 tures." 
 
DO ME STIC US. 
 
 "The craze after money seems to be taking this 
 form," said the Prince. " Men are not satisfied with 
 being rich, or trying to be rich ; they must be very 
 rich. I remember when the Chief Heralder pub 
 lished a little book, years ago, in which he gave a 
 list of the wealthy men in the Imperial City, and 
 every one who was supposed to possess a hundred 
 thousand sestertia was set down in it. And I have 
 known men retire from business on less than that in 
 days long gone by. But the time of moderation is 
 past. In the thirst for gain shallow draughts in 
 toxicate, and drinking deep does not sober but 
 drives mad." 
 
 " I almost wish for the time," said the Princess, 
 "when very rich men will go out of fashion. They 
 seem to do more harm than good ; they do not pro 
 duce half as much envy among people who have 
 nothing, as they create dissatisfaction and a kind of 
 overstrained imitation on the part of people who 
 have neither the means to compete with them, nor 
 the moral courage to forego the effort at competi 
 tion." 
 
 " Your wish will hardly be gratified, at least in 
 my time," said Vindex. The objects of worship 
 which we create for ourselves, however unworthy, 
 are the last to go to the moles and the bats, where 
 they belong. The greed of gain and the idolatry 
 of wealth are the two middle pillars on which the 
 temple of Societas stands, and by which it is borne 
 up, and there is no power mighty enough to bow 
 down upon them and drag them to the earth. The 
 
HOME AGAIN. 
 
 273 
 
 tyranny of Socictas has its main- stay in the com 
 pulsory extravagance and immoderation which it 
 establishes as the rule of its service." 
 
 " What can be done ? " said the Prince. " Every 
 thing goes to extremes with us. Magna Patria is 
 a very young and fast growing nation, and, I sup 
 pose, must have its fling at everything before settling 
 down to steady habits. If you ever tried to put a 
 halter on a colt in a ten-acre lot, you know he would 
 have his turn in ever/ corner before you caught 
 him." 
 
 " True enough," said Vindex ; " and as the young 
 people are very much in the ascendant in this young 
 country, perhaps every fashion and folly must run 
 its course; but, meanwhile, there ought to be some 
 sound leaven in the great, seething mass ; seven 
 hundred, if not seven thousand, who are not bowing 
 the knee to Societas when she requires the sacrifice 
 of health, or good morals, or the rigid honesty 
 which forbids transgression of the good old-fash 
 ioned rule of living within one s means." 
 
 44 Or," said the Princess, " when she seeks to poison 
 the very springs of the higher nature. Societas per 
 mits and even patronizes many things that are good 
 and charitable, but we all know that the better life of 
 which we are capable, and which so many honestly 
 crave, cannot possibly thrive on her barren levels 
 and in her unfriendly soil. She is of the earth, 
 earthy, and so must they be who will be hers. But 
 I believe the time will come when there will be 
 people enough to create circles in which good sense 
 18 
 
274 DOMESTICUS. 
 
 and gayety can go hand in hand, so that young girls 
 as gifted by nature in their heads as in their heels, 
 and yet who want to use both, will not find them 
 selves clapped into a kind of debtor s jail by Socie- 
 tas because they will not pay her tax to the utter 
 most farthing." 
 
 " Poor, dear Gloriosa," said Prima, " that is where 
 she wanted to put me, on bread and water, because 
 I was obstinate enough to want my own little way 
 against Societas, and have my tiny bit of a fling in 
 the contrary direction from hers. I am almost 
 afraid I overdid my opposition and really offended 
 her, which I would not have done for the world. 
 She drove me to talking as I did, and if all I said 
 were written down or repeated, I fear people would 
 think I was pragmatical and a prig. But I am not 
 a prig. Am I, Juventus ? " 
 
 " I never saw a prig," said Juventus, pausing over 
 his capon. " They don t grow wild in Dirigo and 
 I have not encountered them here. I really don t 
 know what a prig is." 
 
 " I know ! " cried Secundus. " The Princess Pug- 
 nax keeps one. It is her grown-up grand-daughter. 
 She takes hold of things as if they were eels, like 
 this." 
 
 And Secundus gave a vivid pantomimic illus 
 tration drawn from his last summer s experience in 
 a fish-pond. 
 
 "And she talks the same way," exclaimed Tertia, 
 eager to impart her quota of information to Juven 
 tus, who, up to this time, she supposed, knew every- 
 
HOME AGAIN. 2/5 
 
 thing. " She is perfectly horrid ; she is going to 
 establish a society to suppress toys, and story books, 
 and dancing schools, and " 
 
 "Children!" said the Princess, "You know it is 
 against all rules to talk at the table about the pecu 
 liarities of people." 
 
 " Yes, mamma," said Tertia, subsiding into si 
 lence, but rather under protest " Only \ve are not 
 talking about people, but about prigs." 
 
 "I wonder," said Prima, "where Gloriosa is. She 
 was still out of town day before yesterday. I would 
 so like to help her but what consolation can any 
 one offer her ? She is worse than widowed. And I 
 love her so dearly !" 
 
 The Prince could not but recall his own hour of 
 calamity; the loving help that had been to him like 
 a fountain of living water in the desert ; the sweet 
 uses of adversity which he had known ; the happy 
 issue out of all his troubles which he had been 
 granted, and which, while leaving him poorer in this 
 world s goods, had enriched him with treasures he 
 felt would never fail. He said, quietly, "May Glo 
 riosa find shelter and succor from some loving heart 
 and in some happy home." 
 
 They were still lingering at the table, late in the 
 evening, detained not so much by its good cheer as 
 by the entertaining talk of Vindex, who found in such 
 companionship as this his best relaxation and recrea 
 tion from the cares and toils which were his constant 
 portion, when the Princess rose and excused herself, 
 
2 ;6 DOME STIC US. 
 
 saying that she had been summoned to speak with 
 some one who must see her instantly. 
 
 She entered the dimly-lighted reception-room. A 
 woman waiting in the darkness suddenly threw back 
 her veil, and caught her by both hands. 
 
 " Gloriosa ! is this you ? " 
 
 " Yes, it is I. I am distracted almost beside 
 myself. Have you heard that Novus has betrayed 
 me, in every way, and is hiding, or has fled ? They 
 are searching the house. It is dreadful ! I cannot 
 stop there. None of my people are in town. I 
 only came yesterday. I cannot go to any of my 
 set. They are not friends for a trouble like this. 
 I want you to help me. I heard you were home 
 again, so I came here. It will kill me. To leave 
 me penniless ! Oh the cowardice of it, and the 
 shame of it ! I am only glad I have no children to 
 be beggared along with me." 
 
 She sank on the chair the Princess had drawn 
 toward her, while she still held her hand. 
 
 " My poor Gloriosa, I am so glad you came to 
 us. There is a home for you here, if nowhere else. 
 The Prince will advise you, and Vindex, the best, 
 wisest, truest of friends, will take your case in hand. 
 But just now what you need is rest and perfect quiet ; 
 dismiss your attendant and stay with me. You shall 
 see no one not even Prima." 
 
 " It would kill me to see her now," said Gloriosa. 
 "I have treated her badly; but what a punish 
 ment to fall on me and I gave him no cause. 
 It was his extravagance not mine and to cheat 
 
HOME AGAIN. 
 
 277 
 
 me out of what was my own. It is infamous! 
 Infamous!" 
 
 The Princess compelled her to remain. After 
 sending a brief message to Prima, to explain her 
 absence, and to save Gloriosa from intrusion, she 
 took her to the apartment adjoining her own; gently 
 forced her to take some needed stimulant; stayed 
 with her, soothing, calming and consoling her, as if 
 she were her own child; and, finally, when she was 
 quieted into a better condition, left her in the keep 
 ing of Patella, who was ready, at call, to wait and 
 watch beside her through the night. 
 
 " It seems wonderful," said the Little Lady to 
 Prima, when she bade her good-night, " that my first 
 duty, on re-entering this dear home, should be one 
 of service to this poor, sorrow-stricken soul ; and 
 that Patella, with her humble ministrations, should 
 be able to bring to her, in her hour of anguish, an 
 unselfish succor such as all her lost wealth could 
 never buy." 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 LAST WORDS. 
 
 MY story is told, and only a few words remain 
 to be said. 
 
 Magna Patria, when last heard from, was enjoying 
 a full measure of peace and prosperity. The novel 
 idea is abroad in the realm that the great body of the 
 good people who pay for carrying on their own gov 
 ernment may, possibly, be better served by trained 
 and skilled officials, than by raw hands, or by place- 
 hunters and spoils-men, and that fitness for special 
 duty is as safe a rule in the conduct of public affairs 
 as in the domain of private industry. With this and 
 other sound doctrines as the basis of social and po 
 litical order, the Sisterhood need fear no adverse 
 fortunes. 
 
 Novus never reappeared in the Imperial City. 
 He led, for some time, a vagabond life, in distant 
 foreign capitals, seen and shunned by his roving 
 compatriots, and gradually fell into such obscurity 
 that whether he were dead or alive few people knew, 
 and still fewer cared to know. A small portion of 
 Gloriosa s separate property was identified and res 
 cued from the general wreck of his estate, providing 
 her with a scanty income, and enabling her to flut- 
 278 
 
LAST WORDS. 279 
 
 ter, with clipped wings and faded plumage, in the 
 gay parterres of Societas. The ancient friendship 
 with Prima, revived in the shadows of her distress, 
 became the best solace of her semi-widowed state. 
 
 Stella was traced, across the sea, to the home of 
 her ancestors, whither she betook herself, with some 
 of her kinsfolk, where she is said to have made a 
 second marriage which, it is to be hoped, proved 
 better than her first. 
 
 Patella was tenderly cared for in her declining 
 years. The Princess, placing her in the front rank 
 of the unselfish and devoted spirits of her sex, has 
 never yet been able to put a limit to the multitude 
 of the sins of Domesticus which are covered by the 
 virtues of Patella. 
 
 Vindex made unavailing search for the last of the 
 line of Furax, for whom the unclaimed sestertia 
 were kept in safe deposit. As of old, the skilled 
 advocate and wise counsellor, he came, at last, while 
 unwilling to make any admissions, to be half ready 
 to take it as proved, in the inner tribunal and shrine 
 of conscience, that the truest sense of justice and the 
 highest rule of honesty may sometimes be found, 
 beyond and above the decrees of the Forum, or the 
 mandates of the Law, in a woman s unreasoning in 
 stinct. 
 
 Juventus came rapidly to the front rank of his 
 calling. He is satisfied with the repute and the sub 
 stantial rewards he has gained, and with the assured 
 certainty of leaving to his children and Prima s a 
 name identified with the results of a career of hon- 
 
2 8o DOMESTIC US. 
 
 orable toil. He foresees a growing conflict between 
 the interests of laboring men and their employers, 
 but he believes that the issue will finally be resolved, 
 not by the subversion of law, but by the establish 
 ment of a more enlightened reciprocity between 
 these mutually dependent interests ; and while he 
 would have no man eat who will not work, he hopes 
 for the time when every willing worker shall have 
 his due portion meted out to him, according to the 
 rule of justice and the spirit of a true humanity. 
 
 Prima, long ago, became the centre of a radiant 
 circle whose bright philosophy of life takes no ac 
 count of Societas and her shams. It asserts the para 
 mount seriousness of work and the permissible gay- 
 ety of play. It teaches that labor is the prime factor 
 of human happiness, as it is the first necessity of hu 
 man existence and the sole source of permanent 
 wealth. It believes that contentment is better than 
 riches, and that there is nothing, earthly, nearer 
 heaven than home. On this broad basis, it can admit 
 to its companionship almost any one, except the 
 young men who fancy they cannot marry without 
 fortunes, and the young women who fear to wed 
 without doweries. 
 
 By this happy circle the Princess is held in high 
 esteem. She is an accepted oracle, with no ambi 
 guity in her utterances. Her long and hard strug 
 gles with adverse forces in the march and battle of 
 life have wrought out a wealth of experience from 
 whose ample stores she is ever ready to impart help 
 and encouragement to her struggling sisters. Hav- 
 
LAST WORDS. 2 8l 
 
 ing solved the problem of Domesticus by her self- 
 sustained supremacy on his own ground, she is 
 striving to bring into the bewildering sphere of his 
 activities, the elements of training and education 
 which common sense and the universal judgment 
 of mankind demand in all other departments of 
 service. While her heart and her hands are fully 
 occupied in maintaining many other good works, she 
 knows of none whose use is more necessary, or 
 whose results may be more beneficent. 
 
 The Prince is a confirmed optimist. The disci 
 pline of life has mellowed and refined his being. 
 Some fruits, shaken from the tree, or plucked with 
 rude hand, ripen better in the dark than in the sun 
 shine and on the native stock. So it has been with 
 his better nature, which, in his advancing years, is 
 suffused with the glow of a true sympathy. He is 
 in accord with the Princess in the constant faith that 
 there is more happiness than misery in the world ; 
 more good than evil; more truth than falsehood; 
 more honest men than rogues ; that the human 
 race, in spite of all its blunders and stumblings, 
 is moving forward and not backward, and that in 
 its bright future, under a better guidance than our 
 own, there is hope for us all, including DOMESTICUS. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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