“Tropes on tropes!” said.  Media.  “Let me tell the tale,—­straight-forward like a line.  Verdanna is a lunatic—­”

“A trope! my lord,” cried Babbalanja.

“My tropes are not tropes,” said Media, “but yours are.—­Verdanna is a lunatic, that after vainly striving to cut another’s throat, grimaces before a standing pool and threatens to cut his own.  And is such a madman to be intrusted with himself?  No; let another govern him, who is ungovernable to himself Ay, and tight hold the rein; and curb, and rasp the bit.  Do I exaggerate?—­Mohi, tell me, if, save one lucid interval, Verdanna, while independent of Dominora, ever discreetly conducted her affairs?  Was she not always full of fights and factions?  And what first brought her under the sway of Bello’s scepter?  Did not her own Chief Dermoddi fly to Bello’s ancestor for protection against his own seditious subjects?  And thereby did not her own king unking himself?  What wonder, then, and where the wrong, if Henro, Bello’s conquering sire, seized the diadem?”

“What my lord cites is true,” said Mohi, “but cite no more, I pray; lest, you harm your cause.”

“Yet for all this, Babbalanja,” said Media, “Bello but holds lunatic Verdanna’s lands in trust.”

“And may the guardian of an estate also hold custody of the ward, my lord?”

“Ay, if he can.  What can be done, may be:  that’s the Greed of demi-gods.”

“Alas, alas!” cried Yoomy, “why war with words over this poor, suffering land.  See! for all her bloom, her people starve; perish her yams, ere taken from the soil; the blight of heaven seems upon them.”

“Not so,” said Media.  “Heaven sends no blights.  Verdanna will not learn.  And if from one season’s rottenss, rottenness they sow again, rottenness must they reap.  But Yoomy, you seem earnest in this matter;—­come:  on all hands it is granted that evils exist in Verdanna; now sweet Sympathizer, what must the royal Bello do to mend them?”

“I am no sage,” said Yoomy, “what would my lord Media do?”

“What would you do, Babbalanja,” said Media.

“Mohi, what you?” asked the philosopher.

“And what would the company do?” added Mohi.

“Now, though these evils pose us all,” said Babbalanja, “there lately died in Verdanna, one, who set about curing them in a humane and peaceable way, waving war and bloodshed.  That man was Konno.  Under a huge caldron, he kept a roaring fire.”

“Well, Azzageddi, how could that answer his purpose?” asked Media.

“Nothing better, my lord.  His fire boiled his bread-fruit; and so convinced were his countrymen, that he was well employed, that they almost stripped their scanty orchards to fill his caldron.”

“Konno was a knave,” said Mohi.

“Your pardon, old man, but that is only known to his ghost, not to us.  At any rate he was a great man; for even assuming he cajoled his country, no common man could have done it.”