coin
called love," said he to himself, "has two faces: tender devotion and
bitter aversion; just now she is showing me the latter. But, however
different the image and superscription may be on the two sides, if you
ring it, it always gives out the same tone; and I can hear it even in
her most insulting words."

When the family met at table he made Paula's excuses; he himself ate
only a few mouthfuls, for the judges had assembled some time since and
were waiting for him.

The right of life and death had been placed in the hands of the
ancestors of the Mukaukas, powerful princes of provinces; they had
certainly wielded it even in the dynasty of Psammitichus, whose power
had been put to a terrible end by Cambyses the Persian. And still the
Uraeus snake--the asp whose bite caused almost instant death, reared its
head as the time-honored emblem of this privilege, by the side of St.
George the Dragon-slayer, over the palaces of the Mukaukas at Memphis,
and at Lykopolis in Upper Egypt. And in both these places the head
of the family retained the right of arbitrary judgment and capital
punishment over the retainers of his house and the inhabitants of
the district he governed, after Justinian first, and then the Emperor
Heraclius, had confirmed them in their old prerogative. The chivalrous
St. George was placed between the snakes so as to replace a heathen
symbol by a Christian one. Formerly indeed the knight himself had had
the head of a sparrow-hawk: that is to say of the god Horus, who had
overthrown the evil-spirit, Seth-Typhon, to avenge his father; but about
two centuries since the heathen crocodile-destroyer had been transformed
into the Christian conqueror of the dragon.

After the Arab conquest the Moslems had left all ancient customs and
rights undisturbed, including those of the Mukaukas.

The court which assembled to sit in judgment on all cases concerning
the adherents of the house consisted of the higher officials of the
governor's establishment. The Mukaukas himself was president, and his
grown-up son was his natural deputy. During Orion's absence, Nilus, the
head of the exchequer, a shrewd and judicious Egyptian, had generally
represented his invalid master; but on the present occasion Orion was
appointed to take his place, and to preside over the assembly.

The governor's son hastened to his father's bedroom to beg him to
lend him his ring as a token of the authority transferred to him; the
Mukaukas had wi