These words but reflect the thoughts of thousands, who, wearily struggling along the path of life, ask themselves wonderingly, “Why existence, if this is all it brings?” Many a tired and saddened soul has lain itself down to die, with the undefined feeling that the wasted life left behind might not have been if only—only—ay, if only what? Gloria de Lara, Flora Desmond, and others, could answer that vague, yearning cry. They would reply, “If only Nature had been obeyed.” Therein lies the secret of the troubles of this world, the suffering, agony, and misery that millions have to put up with, while a clique lives and reigns, making laws and leading the multitude by the nose under the guise of liberty and freedom! For every happy heart, thousands there are of wretched ones; for every well-fed mortal, thousands there are who starve and suffer. The world is old, its years unknown to the ken of man. Through all these years man has ruled therein, and this is what he has brought it to! Can he do nothing better? Yes, but only hand in hand with woman. Nature declares it; and he who would fight against Nature, must create the evils that torture the world. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. Downing Street is awake betimes, and within the precincts of the residence of the First Lord of the Treasury an unusual stir and signs of an unwonted anxiety are perceivable. Seated around a long oblong table in a singularly doleful-looking room, are a baker’s dozen of gentlemen, apparently in eager discussion. Perplexity and anxiety is on every face, not unmixed, in some cases, with vacuity. A stranger dropped from the clouds, and unaccustomed to the ways, and manners, and customs of our planet, might innocently inquire who these disturbed-looking personages are, and what their business? He would be told in reply that the personages are nothing more nor less than the Sovereign of Great Britain’s Ministers, their business, the holding of a Cabinet Council. But at such an hour, nine o’clock in the morning! Why, in the ordinary course of affairs, poor old Lord Muddlehead, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, would be adjusting his night-cap, and turning over for his second sleep in bed, and that excellent nonentity, Lord Donothing, Lord President of the Council and Privy Seal, would be sweetly dreaming of rest and peace, well merited and well earned, after the arduous and fatiguing duties attaching to his noble office! However, a matter of importance has shaken sleep from their eyes, as they have been summoned post-haste to attend their chief on urgent public business.