in the sanctuary:  every one longed to know how his neighbour’s plot throve, and grudged not to buy the knowledge by disclosing a little corner of his own.  Thus rendered communicative, their colloquies would travel back into the past, and as the veterans of intrigue fought their battles over again, the most experienced would learn things that made them open their eyes with amazement.  “Ah!” they would hear, “that is just where you were mistaken.  You had bought Eromenus, but so had I, and old Nicephorus had outbid us both.”  “You deemed the dancer Anthusa a sure card, and knew not of her secret infirmity, of which I had been apprised by her waiting woman.”  “Did you really know nothing of that sliding panel?  And were you ignorant that whatever one says in the blue chamber is heard in the green?” “Yes, I thought so too, and I spent a mint of money before finding out that the dog whose slaver that brazen impostor Panurgiades pretended to sell me was no more mad than he was.”  After such rehearsals of future dialogues by the banks of Styx, the fallen statesmen were observed to appear exceedingly dejected, but the stimulus had become necessary to their existence.  None gossiped so freely or disclosed so much as Photinius and his predecessor Eustathius, whom he had himself displaced—­probably because Eustathius, believing in nothing in heaven or earth but gold, and labouring under an absolute privation of that metal, was regarded even by himself as an extinct volcano.

“Well,” observed he one day, when discoursing with Photinius is an unusually confidential mood, “I am free to say that for my own part I don’t think over much of poison.  It has its advantages, to be sure, but to my mind the disadvantages are even more conspicuous.”

“For example?” inquired Photinius, who had the best reason for confiding in the efficacy of a drag administered with dexterity and discretion.

“Two people must be in the secret at least, if not three,” replied Eustathius, “and cooks, as a rule, are a class of persons entirely unfit to be employed in affairs of State.”

“The Court physician,” suggested Photinius.

“Is only available,” answered Eustathius, “in case his Majesty should send for him, which is most improbable.  If he ever did, poison, praised be the Lord! would be totally unnecessary and entirely superfluous.”

“My dear friend,” said Photinius, venturing at this favourable moment on a question he had been dying to ask ever since he had been an inmate of the convent, “would you mind telling me in confidence, did you ever administer any potion of a deleterious nature to his Sacred Majesty?”

“Never!” protested Eustathius, with fervour.  “I tried once, to be sure, but it was no use.”

“What was the impediment?”

“The perverse opposition of the cupbearer.  It is idle attempting anything of the kind as long as she is about the Emperor.”

“She!” exclaimed Photinius.