er briskly--"this not speaking to me, I mean. I'm quite
willing to tell you all I know, if you care to ask me. I've not
come to bully you or to triumph over you. And after all, you
know, we might easily have treated you as an envoy, too. To be
quite frank, it was I who pleaded for you. . . . Oh! not out of
any tenderness; we have got past that. You Christians have taught
us that. But I thought that so long as we kept our word we need
not go beyond it. And it's proved that I'm right. . . . Aren't
you curious to know why?"

The priest looked at him again.

"Well, we are going to send you back after midnight. You will
have to witness the last scene, I am afraid, so that you can give
a true account of it--the Emperor's death, I mean."

He paused again, waiting for an answer. Then he stood up, at
last, it seemed, pricked into impatience.

"Kindly come with me, Monsignor," he said abruptly. "I have to
take you before the Council."

(III)

It was a large hall, resembling a concert-room, into which the
priest came at last, an hour later, under the escort of James
Hardy and a couple of police, and he had plenty of time to
observe it, as he stood waiting by the little door through which
he stepped on to the back of the platform.

This platform stood at the upper end of the hall, and was set with
a long semicircle of chairs and desks, as if for judges, and these
were occupied by perhaps thirty persons, dressed, he saw, in dull
colours, all alike. The dresses seemed curiously familiar; he
supposed he must have seen them in pictures. Then he remembered a
long while ago Father Jervis telling him that the Socialists
resented the modern developments in matters of costume.

The President's desk and seat were raised a little above the
others, but from behind the priest could see nothing of him but
his black gown and his rather long iron-grey hair; he seemed to
be answering in rapid German some question that one of his
colleagues had just put to him.

The rest of the hall was almost empty. A table stood at the foot
of the platform, and here were three or four of the usual
recording machines; a dozen men sat here too, some writing, some
listening, leaning back in their chairs. In the middle, on the
opposite side of the table, stood a structure resembling a
witness-box, ascended by two steps, railed in on the three other
sides. A man with a pointed grey beard was leaving the box as the
priest came in. Standing about the ha