this contraband food into the harem.

Worse still, she insisted upon taking exercise. She loved to play
romping games within the high walls of the inclosure where she and the
other female attaches of the royal household were kept penned up. Her
father coaxed, pleaded and even threatened, but she refused to lead the
indolent life prescribed by custom; she scorned the sweet and heavy
foods which would enable her to expand into loveliness; she persistently
declined to be fat.

Kalora's education was being directed by a superannuated professor named
Popova. He was so antique and book-wormy that none of the usual
objections urged against the male sex seemed to hold good in his case,
and he had the free run of the palace. Count Selim Malagaski trusted
him implicitly. Popova fawned upon the Governor-General, and seemed
slavish in his devotion. Secretly and stealthily he was working out a
frightful vengeance upon his patron. Twenty years before, Count Selim,
in a moment of anger, had called Popova a "Christian dog."

In Morovenia it is flattery to call a man a "liar." It is just the same
as saying to him, "You belong in the diplomatic corps." It is no
disgrace to be branded as a thief, because all business transactions are
saturated with treachery. But to call another a "Christian dog" is the
thirty-third degree of insult.

Popova writhed in spirit when he was called "Christian," but he covered
his wrath and remained in the nobleman's service and waited for his
revenge. And now he was sacrificing the innocent Kalora in order to
punish the father. He said to himself: "If she does not fatten, then her
father's heart will be broken, and he will suffer even as I have