Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · English Edition
The Keepers of the People
A Critical Edition of the 1898 Novel
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English Edition · Branch 227 of 254
Chapter XVII · The Last Path · pp. 317–330
The Keepers of the People
p. 327“Go, vile creature! Out of the palace with you! Now!” cried the Princess beside herself; and the red of her fury deepened in her face as Latchimi laughed a low laugh.
“You laugh at me! Then I will fling you and your brat out myself!” cried the Princess, and sprang towards the divan.
Latchimi’s teeth bared; she flung forward her right arm from behind her; and something flashed in the glare of light. The Princess’s brow knitted in a terrible bewilderment, a violent effort to grasp what had befallen her; she took one step forward, very carefully, as though feeling her way on doubtful ground; and pitched heavily on to her face, driving Latchimi’s knife deeper into her breast.
There came a smothered murmur from the mutes who had gathered in the doorway; the Princess’s nails grated on the floor, as she writhed in a gasping struggle for breath; the mutes fled; and silence fell.
Latchimi passed her hand slowly over her eyes; a great dread had dimmed them for the moment. She came slowly to the fallen Princess, and stood over her; thrice she struck herself on the brow. Then she knelt down, the faintest glimmer of hope in her eyes, and drew the body over: the jaw had fallen, and she shook her head. She drew the knife from the wound, and thrust it, all bloody, into her girdle; then turned, leapt to the divan, caught up the child, and made three steps to the door. She gazed down the empty corridor into the moonlit garden, shook her head, and came back to the divan. Half lying on it, she set the child before her, devoured it with her eyes, and kissed it many time, bedewing it with great tears. Then she wailed, “Little star, my little star, my sun is set. I go into the darkness, and your light, little star, will not shine through it.”
The child’s great eyes blinked at a light; it paid no heed to her.
The Pavilion was for a long while silent, the intrusion of Death had scared away the light-hearted dwellers in it. Once Latchimi ceased caressing the child to listen.
“The wings still,” she muttered.
At last she heard the feet of Prince Ralph coming heavy and slow, the feet that had always come so lightly; and at the sound of each step her heart quivered as though the foot had been set on it.
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book II, Chapter XVII · The Last Path · Book II, Chapter XVII · The Last Path · pp. 317–330
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Edgar Jepson’s The Keepers of the People begins as a late-Victorian lost-kingdom romance and becomes an unsettling political argument. Ralph Falcon moves from an English country house to the hidden state of Varandaleel, where laughter, secrecy, violence, education, and the duties of rulers are tested against one another.
Historical Text
The novel was first published in London in 1898 by C. Arthur Pearson. This reading text follows the owner-supplied critical edition, whose copy-text is the Methuen Colonial Library issue of the same year digitised by the Internet Archive. The supplied editorial note records the edition’s corrections, normalisations, limits, and unresolved textual risks.
About This Edition
This English Edition preserves the complete supplied text and apparatus: the introduction, reading guide, key words, plot outline, editorial note, both books and all thirty chapters, and the end notes. Its reader branches end at paragraph boundaries, with the original chapter structure and chapter page references mapped to the 1898 printing.
Rights
Edgar Jepson’s 1898 novel is in the public domain. The introduction, reader’s guide, key words, outline, editorial note, notes, editorial arrangement, and design of the supplied edition are © 2026 Diotimos Editions.