d imply that he believes the constitution will be a
failure."

"Without doubt, your Highness. I am convinced that your ministers have
done all they could to prevent the proclamation of the charter, and
failing that, to thwart its workings if it be proclaimed. In this they
have gone hand in hand with the clergy, and their measures have been
well taken. But I do not believe that any state of mind produced by
external influences can long withstand the natural drift of opinion; and
your Highness may be sure that, though the talkers and writers are
mostly against you in this matter, the mass of the people are with you."

Odo answered with a despairing gesture. "How can I be sure, when the
people have no means of expressing their needs? It is like trying to
guess the wants of a deaf and dumb man!"

The hunchback flushed suddenly. "The people will not always be deaf and
dumb," he said. "Some day they will speak."

"Not in my day," said Odo wearily. "And meanwhile we blunder on, without
ever really knowing what incalculable instincts and prejudices are
pitted against us. You and your party tell me the people are sick of the
burdens the clergy lay on them--yet their blind devotion to the Church
is manifest at every turn, and it did not need the business of the
Virgin's crown to show me how little reason and justice can avail
against such influences."

Gamba replied by an impatient gesture. "As to the Virgin's crown," he
said, "your Highness must have guessed it was one of the friars' tricks:
a last expedient to turn the people against you. I was not bred up by a
priest for nothing; I know what past masters those gentry are in raising
ghosts and reading portents. They know the minds of the poor folk as the
herdsman knows the habits of his cattle; and for generations they have
used that knowledge to bring the people more completely under their
control."

"And what have we to oppose to such a power?" Odo exclaimed. "We are
fighting the battle of ideas against passions, of reflection against
instinct; and you have but to look in the human heart to guess which
side will win in such a struggle. We have science and truth and
common-sense with us, you say--yes, but the Church has love and fear and
tradition, and the solidarity of nigh two thousand years of dominion."

Gamba listened in respectful silence; then he replied with a faint
smile: "All that your Highness says is true; but I beg leave to relate
to your Highness a tale w