“Did they have halos?”

“No—­anyway, not the hoop kind.  The archangels and the upper-class patriarchs wear a finer thing than that.  It is a round, solid, splendid glory of gold, that is blinding to look at.  You have often seen a patriarch in a picture, on earth, with that thing on—­ you remember it?—­he looks as if he had his head in a brass platter.  That don’t give you the right idea of it at all—­it is much more shining and beautiful.”

“Did you talk with those archangels and patriarchs, Sandy?”

“Who—­I?  Why, what can you be thinking about, Stormy?  I ain’t worthy to speak to such as they.”

“Is Talmage?”

“Of course not.  You have got the same mixed-up idea about these things that everybody has down there.  I had it once, but I got over it.  Down there they talk of the heavenly King—­and that is right—­but then they go right on speaking as if this was a republic and everybody was on a dead level with everybody else, and privileged to fling his arms around anybody he comes across, and be hail-fellow-well-met with all the elect, from the highest down.  How tangled up and absurd that is!  How are you going to have a republic under a king?  How are you going to have a republic at all, where the head of the government is absolute, holds his place forever, and has no parliament, no council to meddle or make in his affairs, nobody voted for, nobody elected, nobody in the whole universe with a voice in the government, nobody asked to take a hand in its matters, and nobody allowed to do it?  Fine republic, ain’t it?”

“Well, yes—­it is a little different from the idea I had—­but I thought I might go around and get acquainted with the grandees, anyway—­not exactly splice the main-brace with them, you know, but shake hands and pass the time of day.”

“Could Tom, Dick and Harry call on the Cabinet of Russia and do that?—­on Prince Gortschakoff, for instance?”

“I reckon not, Sandy.”

“Well, this is Russia—­only more so.  There’s not the shadow of a republic about it anywhere.  There are ranks, here.  There are viceroys, princes, governors, sub-governors, sub-sub-governors, and a hundred orders of nobility, grading along down from grand-ducal archangels, stage by stage, till the general level is struck, where there ain’t any titles.  Do you know what a prince of the blood is, on earth?”

“No.”

“Well, a prince of the blood don’t belong to the royal family exactly, and he don’t belong to the mere nobility of the kingdom; he is lower than the one, and higher than t’other.  That’s about the position of the patriarchs and prophets here.  There’s some mighty high nobility here—­people that you and I ain’t worthy to polish sandals for—­and they ain’t worthy to polish sandals for the patriarchs and prophets.  That gives you a kind of an idea of their rank, don’t it?  You begin to see how high up they are, don’t