had gone, I sent for the physician of the jail, whom I knew to
be trustworthy, since I had appointed him myself. Without telling him
anything, I bade him examine and preserve the figs, and also dissect the
body of the monkey to discover why it died.

He bowed and went away with the fruit. A while later he returned, and
showed me an open fig. In the heart of it was a pinch of white powder.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The deadliest poison that is known, General. See, the stalk has been
drawn out, the powder blown in through a straw, and then the stalk
replaced."

"Ah!" I said, "that is clever, but not quite clever enough. They have
mixed the stalks. I noted that the purple fig had the stalk of a green
fig, and that is why I tried it on the monkey."

"You observe well, General."

"Yes, Physician, I observe. I learned that when, as a lad, I hunted game
in the far North. Also I learned to keep silent, since noise frightens
game. Do you as much."

"Have no fear," he answered; and went about his business with the dead
monkey.

When he had gone I thought a while. Then I rose, and went to the chapel
of the prison, or, rather, to a place whence I could see those in the
chapel without being seen. This chapel was situated in a gloomy crypt,
lighted only with oil lamps that hung from the massive pillars and
arches. The day was the Sabbath of the Christians, and when I entered
the little secret hollow in the walls, the sacrament was being
administered to certain of the prisoners.

Truly it was a sad sight, for the ministering priest was none other than
the Caesar Nicephorus, the eldest of the Emperor's uncles, who had been
first ordained in order that he might be unfit to sit upon the throne,
and afterwards blinded, as I have told. He was a tall, pale man, with an
uncertain mouth and a little pointed chin, apparently between forty and
fifty years of age, and his face was made dreadful by two red
hollows where the eyes should have been. Yet, notwithstanding this
disfigurement, and his tonsured crown, and the broidered priest's robes
which hung upon him awkwardly, as he stumbled through the words of his
office, to this poor victim there still seemed to cling some air of
royal birth and bearing. Being blind, he could not see to administer
the Element, and therefore his hand was guided by one of his imperial
brethren, who also had been made a priest. The tongue of this priest had
been slit, but now and again he gibbered some di