The Keepers of the People

884The feast was slowly served; and after the rough fare of the journey from the sea, the Princess Agnes found the dishes delicious; the wines were old, and of a fine flavour. Now and again the musicians, lute-players and fiddlers, played to them melodies sweet, sad, or heartening; and now and again the dancers, a flutter of bright colours, danced before them. At first, between the courses, the Princess Agnes lay back in her chair, a chair of a very easy, comfortable shape; and asked questions of the old Princess, concerning the beautiful Jewess, and the Englishmen. She learned that her name was Vashti, that she was Mistress of the Mutes, that they were Colonel Sayers, Dr. Brand, and Mr. Cooper, a naturalist. Then she listened to the quiet talk of the Princes and the three Englishmen; and it was little to her liking. It ran, for the most part, on Europe, questions to Prince Ralph about men and women whom she knew as old or already dead, questions as to changes in manners and laws. The comments on his answers were all in a contemptuous strain; a continuous disparagement of all the ideals of national life she had learned to believe highest; the expression of a plain disbelief that a share in the government was the greatest blessing which the bulk of a nation could enjoy; and now and again a chance phrase showed her that no one of them reckoned the precious lives of men of any weight in the balance against the welfare of the people. She began to grow indignant with them; and Prince Ralph’s laconic indictment of the spirit of the Western peoples, and the results of sentimental civilisation increased her anger. Though on the rare occasions on which she had heard him discuss them, he had talked in that strain, she had thought that further contact with Europeans, and even more companionship with her must have changed him; now he but showed himself hardened in his perversity.

885After a while her anger got the better of her bewilderment, and it became her plain duty to assert herself, and set right, out of the store of her wisdom, these benighted thinkers. It would have seemed becoming to most women to wait a while, until this new circle was better known to them: but the Princess Agnes did not reckon herself as other women; she had great faith in her power of grasping quickly a situation; and she began to set them right. They listened to her with no show of impatience, and received her high thoughts on liberty and the dignity of the free man with the indulgence one accords to the prattling of an intelligent, petted child.