secret, and of course
it is your property. Hereafter, however, I shall hope to purchase it
from you."

"Prince," I answered, "if one of your subjects-found himself in the
power of a race capable of conquering this world and destroying its
inhabitants, would you forgive him if he furnished them with the means
of reaching you?"

"I think," he replied, "my forgiveness would be of little consequence
in that case. But go on with your story."

I finished my narration among looks of surprise and incredulity from
no inconsiderable part of the audience, which, however, I noticed the
less because the Prince himself listened with profound interest;
putting in now and then a question which indicated his perfect
comprehension of my account, of the conditions of such a journey and
of the means I had employed to meet them.

"Before you were admitted," he said, "Endo Zampta had read to us his
report upon your vessel and her machinery, an account which in every
respect consists with and supports the truth of your relation. Indeed,
were your story untrue, you have run a greater risk in telling it here
than in the most daring adventure I have ever known or imagined. The
Court is dismissed. Reclamomorta will please me by remaining with me
for the present."

When the assembly dispersed, I followed their Autocrat at his desire
into his private apartments, where, resting among a pile of cushions
and motioning me to take a place in immediate proximity to himself, he
continued the conversation in a tone and manner so exactly the same as
that he had employed in public as to show that the latter was not
assumed for purposes of monarchical stage-play, but was the natural
expression of his own character as developed under the influence of
unlimited and uncontradicted power. He only exchanged, for unaffected
interest and implied confidence, the tone of ironical doubt by which
he had rendered it out of the question for his courtiers to charge him
with a belief in that which public opinion might pronounce impossible,
while making it apparent to me that he regarded the bigotry of
scepticism with scarcely veiled contempt.

"I wish," he said, "I had half-a-dozen subjects capable of imagining
such an enterprise and hardy enough to undertake it. But though we all
profess to consider knowledge, and especially scientific knowledge,
the one object for which it is worth while to live, none of us would
risk his life in such an adventure for all the rew