There was a faint scent of the sea on the air, and he inhaled its salty
odour with a sense of refreshment.
"All for Lotys!" he murmured. "Working for Lotys, plotting, planning,
scheming for Lotys! The government intimidated,--the ministry cast
out,--the throne in peril,--the people in arms,--the city in a blaze,--
Revolution and Anarchy doing their wild work broad-cast together,--
all for Lotys! Always a woman in it! Search to the very depth of every
political imbroglio,--dig out the secret reason of every war that ever
was begun or ended in the world,--and there we shall find the love or
the hate of a woman at the very core of the business! Some such secrets
history knows, and has chronicled,--and some will never be known,--but
up to the present there is not even a religion in the world where a
Woman is not made the beginning of a God!"
He smiled somewhat grimly at his own fanciful musings, and then,
shutting the window, retired. The house was soon buried in profound
silence and darkness, and over the city tuneful bells rang the half-
hour after midnight. Four miles distant from the 'quarter of the poor,'
and high above the clustering houses of the whole magnificent
metropolis, the Royal palace towered whitely on its proud eminence in
the glimmer of the moon, a stately pile of turrets and pinnacles; and
on the battlements the sentries walked, pacing to and fro in regular
march, with regular changes, all through the night hours.
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