“Yet, in Porpheero, strong scepters have been wrested from anointed hands.  Mankind seems in arms.”

“Let them arm on.  They hate us:—­good;—­they always have; yet still we’ve reigned, son after sire.  Sometimes they slay us, Babbalanja; pour out our marrow, as I this wine; but they spill no kinless blood.  ’Twas justly held of old, that but to touch a monarch, was to strike at Oro.—­Truth.  The palest vengeance is a royal ghost; and regicides but father slaves.  Thrones, not scepters, have been broken.  Mohi, what of the past?  Has it not ever proved so?”

“Pardon, my lord; the times seem changed.  ’Tis held, that demi-gods no more rule by right divine.  In Vivenza’s land, they swear the last kings now reign in Mardi.”

“Is the last day at hand, old man?  Mohi, your beard is gray; but, Yoomy, listen.  When you die, look around; mark then if any mighty change be seen.  Old kingdoms may be on the wane; but new dynasties advance.  Though revolutions rise to high spring-tide, monarchs will still drown hard;—­monarchs survived the flood!”

“Are all our dreams, then, vain?” sighed Yoomy.  “Is this no dawn of day that streaks the crimson East!  Naught but the false and flickering lights which sometimes mock Aurora in the north!  Ah, man, my brother! have all martyrs for thee bled in vain; in vain we poets sang, and prophets spoken?  Nay, nay; great Mardi, helmed and mailed, strikes at Oppression’s shield, and challenges to battle!  Oro will defend the right, and royal crests must roll.”

“Thus, Yoomy, ages since, you mortal poets sang; but the world may not be moved from out the orbit in which first it rolled.  On the map that charts the spheres, Mardi is marked ‘the world of kings.’  Round centuries on centuries have wheeled by:—­has all this been its nonage?  Now, when the rocks grow gray, does man first sprout his beard?  Or, is your golden time, your equinoctial year, at hand, that your race fast presses toward perfection; and every hand grasps at a scepter, that kings may be no more?”

“But free Vivenza!  Is she not the star, that must, ere long, lead up the constellations, though now unrisen?  No kings are in Vivenza; yet, spite her thralls, in that land seems more of good than elsewhere.  Our hopes are not wild dreams:  Vivenza cheers our hearts.  She is a rainbow to the isles!”

“Ay, truth it is, that in Vivenza they have prospered.  But thence it comes not, that all men may be as they.  Are all men of one heart and brain; one bone and sinew?  Are all nations sprung of Dominora’s loins?  Or, has Vivenza yet proved her creed?  Yoomy! the years that prove a man, prove not a nation.  But two kings’-reigns have passed since Vivenza was a monarch’s.  Her climacteric is not come; hers is not yet a nation’s manhood even; though now in childhood, she anticipates her youth, and lusts for empire like any czar.  Yoomy! judge not yet.  Time hath tales to tell.  Many books, and many long, long chapters, are wanting to Vivenza’s history; and whet history but is full of blood?”