in a fight against whatever odds, but--"

"Quite right. I covet no street scuffle to-night. Lend me,
I pray you, a sufficiency of men. You will know best what are
needed. For me, I am accustomed to a city with quiet streets."

A score of sturdy fellows were detailed off for my escort, and
with them in a double file on either hand, I marched out from the
close perfumed air of the pyramid into the cool moonlight of the
city. It was my purpose to make a tour of the walls and to find
out somewhat of the disposition of these rebels.

But the Gods saw fit to give me another education first. The
city, as I saw it during that night walk, was no longer the old
capital that I had known, the just accretion of the ages, the due
admixture of comfort and splendour. The splendour was there,
vastly increased. Whole wards had been swept away to make space
for new palaces, and new pyramids of the wealthy, and I could not
but have an admiration for the skill and the brain which made
possible such splendid monuments.

And, indeed, gazing at them there under the silver of the
moonlight, I could almost understand the emotions of the Europeans
and other barbarous savages which cause them to worship all such
great buildings as Gods, since they deem them too wonderful and
majestic to be set up by human hands unaided.

Still, if it was easy to admire, it was simple also to see
plain advertisement of the cost at which these great works had been
reared. From each grant of ground, where one of these stately