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 50 of 254
Chapter III · The Empress With the Emerald Eyes · pp. 29–37
The Keepers of the People
p. 33Prince Melinsky came to dinner very sulky still, and sat silent, drinking glass after glass of champagne. His silent sullenness oppressed Lady Lisdor and Althea; but when the wine loosened his tongue, it ran in so offensive a strain of suggestion, and his eyes kept falling on Lady Lisdor’s shoulders in so discomforting a fashion, that instead of lingering while the men drank their wine and smoked a cigarette, she carried off Althea to the drawing-room as soon as possible. When they had left the room Lord Lisdor said that this evening they would drink their coffee in the smoking-room. With it the Russian drank several glasses of Benedictine, and forthwith fell again to brandy and soda. As he grew more and more drunk, he became more and more his natural Mongolian self, and began to boast of his successes with women. The two men watched him, Lord Lisdor with a bored air and weary eyes, Ralph Falcon impassive. At last, at the end of one of his stories, Lord Lisdor said savagely — “This is a nice French Russian; even though it’s most likely all lies. Sometimes they make me believe that there isn’t a decent woman on the other side of the Channel.”
“Why should there be — with such men?” said Ralph Falcon.
“Why, indeed?” said Lord Lisdor, scowling at his chuckling guest.
“I will go to Ruth and Althea, unless you think you will want me,” said Ralph Falcon.
“Thanks. I can deal with him all right,” said Lord Lisdor, with a certain ugly eagerness for Prince Melinsky to grow violent.
Ralph Falcon rose; but, even as he did so, the Russian burst out afresh. “And now I am décavé — broken, you English call it! I have played the game too high too long. But what of it? I am sick of Europe; I have drained it. I am set on a bigger game. The East — the East!”
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book I, Chapter III · The Empress With the Emerald Eyes · Book I, Chapter III · The Empress With the Emerald Eyes · pp. 29–37
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.