resents problems almost
insoluble; problems of extreme delicacy--or indelicacy.'

'I had not heard of that affair,' said the Earl. 'Like Eumaeus in Homer
and in Mr. Stephen Phillips, I dwell among the swine, and come rarely to
the city.'

'The matter never went beyond the inmost diplomatic circles,' said Logan.
'The Sultan's favourite son, the Jam, or Crown Prince, of Mingrelia
(_Jamreal_, they called him), loved four beautiful Bollachians,
sisters--again I disguise the nationality.'

'Sisters!' exclaimed the peer; 'I have always given my vote against the
Deceased Wife's Sister Bill; but _four_, and all alive!'

'The law of the Prophet, as you are aware, is not monogamous,' said
Logan; 'and the Eastern races are not averse to connections which are
reprobated by our Western ideas. The real difficulty was that of
religion.

'Oh, why from the heretic girl of my soul
Should I fly, to seek elsewhere an orthodox kiss?'

hummed Logan, rather to the surprise of Lord Embleton. He went on: 'It
is not so much that the Mingrelians object to mixed marriages in the
matter of religion, but the Bollachians, being Christians, do object, and
have a horror of polygamy. It was a cruel affair. All four girls, and
the Jamreal himself, were passionately attached to each other. It was
known, too, that, for political reasons, the maidens had received a
dispensation from the leading Archimandrite, their metropolitan, to marry
the proud Paynim. The Mingrelian Sultan is suzerain of Bollachia; his
native subjects are addicted to massacring the Bollachians from religious
motives, and the Bollachian Church (Nestorians, as you know) hoped that
the four brides would convert the Jamreal to their creed, and so solve
the Bollachian question. The end, they said, justified the means.'

'Jesuitical,' said the Earl, shaking his head sadly.

'That is what my friend and partner, Mr. Merton, thought,' said Logan,
'when we were applied to by the Sultan. Merton displayed extraordinary
tact and address. All was happily settled, the Sultan and the Jamreal
were reconciled, the young ladies met other admirers, and learned that
what they had taken for love was but a momentary infatuation.'

The Earl sighed, '_Renovare dolorem_! My family,' said he, 'is, and has
long been--ever since the Gunpowder Plot--firmly, if not passionately,
attached to the Church of England. The Prince of Scalastro is a
Catholic.'

'Had we a closer acquaintance with