heir
political and religious sentiments. Their women, in particular, loved
the Prince and had dreams of appearing one day at his Court.

However, the Republic retained some partisans and defenders. If it was
not in a position to believe in the fidelity of its own officials it
could at least still count on the devotion of the manual labourers,
although it had never relieved their misery. These came forth in crowds
from their quarries and their factories to defend it, and marched in
long processions, gloomy, emaciated, and sinister. They would have died
for it because it had given them hope.

Now, under the Presidency of Theodore Formose, there lived in a
peaceable suburb of Alca a monk called Agaric, who kept a school and
assisted in arranging marriages. In his school he taught fencing and
riding to the sons of old families, illustrious by their birth, but now
as destitute of wealth as of privilege. And as soon as they were old
enough he married them to the daughters of the opulent and despised
caste of financiers.

Tall, thin, and dark, Agaric used to walk in deep thought, with
his breviary in his hand and his brow loaded with care, through the
corridors of the school and the alleys of the garden. His care was not
limited to inculcating in his pupils abstruse doctrines and mechanical
precepts and to endowing them afterwards with legitimate and rich
wives. He entertained political designs and pursued the realisation of
a gigantic plan. His thought of thoughts and labour of labours was
to overthrow the Republic. He was not moved to this by any personal
interest. He believed that a democratic state was opposed to the holy
society to which body and soul he belonged. And all the other monks, his
brethren, thought the same. The Republic was perpetually at strife with
the congregation of monks and the assembly of the faithful. True,
to plot the death of the new government was a difficult and perilous
enterprise. Still, Agaric was in a position to carry on a formidable
conspiracy. At that epoch, when the clergy guided the superior classes
of the Penguins, this monk exercised a tremendous influence over the
aristocracy of Alca.

All the young men whom he had brought up waited only for a favourable
moment to march against the popular power. The sons of the ancient
families did not practise the arts or engage in business. They were
almost all soldiers and served the Republic. They served it, but
they did not love it; they reg