to work.

The same routine was substantially carried into effect each day, a
natural consequence of which was that they became weary of their
enforced luxury, and their hearts yearned for the humble living of
their tenement, with its rough and hearty jollity, and its freedom
from constraint and the supervision of lackeys, however well dressed
or polite. In the case of the fastidious brokers kept under
surveillance, tired nature at last, reluctant, yielded. There came a
day, or rather a night, when even they were able to sleep--an uneasy,
troubled sleep, it is true--amid the mean surroundings of the
tenement.

The determined will of the monarch so ordered affairs that the
conditions under his edict were kept in force for many days. He
proposed to give a thorough test to his quixotic ideas. The portion of
the workmen was hard manual labor by day in the upper regions of air
and light, and by night the relaxation of enervating luxury; and the
portion of the brokers was deep dejection, deep curses, and haggard
sleeplessness.

The culmination of this condition of unrest occurred at a great ball
which another royal edict had blazoned forth to be given as a tribute
to the laboring masses, and at which the non-producers would be
compelled to assist, not indeed as menials, but as experienced
advisers. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at least would be
expended on the pomp and glory of the occasion. The sage counsellors
of state, men deeply versed in the lore of the past, were called
together to devise costumes for the crude working people and to frame
rules of etiquette for their behavior. The most elaborate descriptions
appeared in the daily press of what was proposed. For weeks the vast
preparations went steadily forward. Everything of luxury and ornament
that the commerce of the empire sucked up from the farthest confines
of the earth was made to minister to the great event.

At last the auspicious day arrived. One of the grandest palaces of the
King himself was the scene of the festivity. The costumes worn
represented many of the great names of history, from Julius Caesar to
Napoleon Bonaparte, and from Cleopatra to Marie Antoinette. The height
of the great occasion was reached somewhat after midnight when the
_quadrille d'honneur_ was announced. The great King sat upon a raised
dais, or throne, the better to view the gorgeous pageant. A mighty
fanfare of trumpets, which seemed to whirl the feelings for a moment