his
guests an entertainment of almost regal magnificence. It is not to be
wondered at, therefore, that when the Lord Huanacocha issued invitations
to a banquet--which was not very often--the full number of the invited
generally made a point of accepting, and being present at the function.

Upon the occasion in question the guests consisted of our old friends
Tiahuana, the Villac Vmu, and Motahuana, together with the Lords
Licuchima and Chalihuama, late of the Council of Seven, and the Lords
Chinchacocheta and Lehuava--six in all.

It is not necessary to describe the banquet in detail; let it suffice to
say that, for reasons of his own, the host had given special
instructions that neither trouble nor expense was to be spared to make
the function a complete success; and that therefore, so well had his
instructions been carried out, the entertainment as a whole fell not
very far short of that which had marked the occasion of Escombe's
accession to the throne of the Incas.

There is no need to record in detail the conversation that followed upon
the dismissal of the servants. It is sufficient to say that Huanacocha
had arranged this banquet with the express object of eliciting the views
of his guests upon a certain project that had been gradually taking
shape in his mind, which he believed was now ripe for execution. But,
to his astonishment and consternation, he now discovered that he had to
a very important extent entirely misapprehended the situation; and after
a long and somewhat heated discussion the meeting had broken up without
result, save that the guests had departed from his house in a mutually
distrustful and uneasy frame of mind.

When Huanacocha at length retired to rest that night not only did he
feel somewhat uneasy, but he was also distinctly angry with himself; for
although he had achieved the purpose with which the banquet had been
given--which was to elicit a frank expression of opinion from certain
individuals relative to the Inca and his schemes of reformation--he felt
that he had blundered badly. He had used neither tact nor discretion in
his manner of conducting the conversation; he had been reckless even to
the point of suggesting opposition to the decrees of the sovereign; and
when it was too late, when he had fatally committed himself, he had
seen, to his discomfiture, that two of his companions--and those two the
most powerful persons in the community, next to the Inca himself, namely
the