guest, so I smiled and observed that I had frequently indulged
in unconscious plagiarism of that sort.

"I should imagine," I hastened to add, "that to men like Charles
the First this uncertainty as to the safety of Cromwell would
be great joy."

"I hardly know," returned Boswell. "That very question has been
discussed among us. Charles made a great outward show of grief
when he heard of the coal being delivered at the office of the
Minister of Justice, and we all thought him quite magnanimous,
but it leaked out, just before I left to come here, that he
sent his private secretary to the palace with a Panama hat and
a palm-leaf fan for Cromwell, with his congratulations.

"That seems to savor somewhat of sarcasm."

"Oh, ultimately Hades is bound to be a republic," replied
Boswell. "There are too many clever and ambitious politicians
among us for the place to go along as a despotism much
longer. If the place were filled up with poets and society
people, and things like that, it might go on as an autocracy
forever, but you see it isn't. To men of the caliber of
Alexander the Great and Bonaparte and Caesar, and a thousand
other warriors who never were used to taking orders from
anybody, but were themselves headquarters, the despotic sway
of Apollyon is intolerable, and he hasn't made any effort
to conciliate any of them. If he had appointed Bonaparte
commander-in-chief of his army and made a friend of him, instead
of ordering him to be hanged every month for 415,000 years,