Whilst awaiting the proceedings, the anxious auditory amused themselves by giving expression to their private opinions, which no law of libel at any period of social history has been found powerful enough to repress. ‘What glorious fun!’ cried the young sprig of nobility, ‘Felicitas falling out with his lady Astronomer. I wouldn’t miss it for worlds!’ ‘What a disgraceful episode in the annals of Royalty!’ remarked the elderly prude, who was evidently as anxious as the fastest of swell-ocracy to listen to the forthcoming details. ‘I wouldn’t be Mercia for millions! It is altogether frightful to have such dealings with a MAN!’ exclaimed the serious young lady; who showed her abhorrence of such indecency by bringing her opera glasses to scan the scene more critically. ‘The Emperor has done quite right, to make a stand against the machinations of rabid Republicans;’ remarked a staunch Royalist. ‘We won’t know where we are if this kind of thing goes unpunished. It is evident on the face of it that it is a conspiracy to lower the Imperial prestige, so as to pave the way for a Republic, when the government of the Empire would become a hotbed of office seekers, rivalling America of a hundred years ago, whose motto was,—“National good go hang, we’ll feather our nest while we may.”’ ‘This comes of the preposterous advancement of women: had the Astronomer Royal been a _man_ such a scene could not have occurred,’ observed an acidulated Science-failure of the male sex, whose ill-success at competitive exams. had rendered vicious. ‘If it be a political intrigue, as the Royalist journals aver, how can sex affect her loyalty? The same might have happened with a variation, had the Astronomer Royal been of the male sex,’ returned his neighbour. ‘It is a love-intrigue, ending with the usual quarrel,’ whispered an elderly Solomon, wise in the knowledge of the world’s weakness. ‘I thought Mercia incapable of love-intrigues, or any other, being a perfect model of all the virtues,’ answered his neighbour. ‘All women are “perfect” till they’re tried,’ uttered the same cynic dryly. ‘Which means that Mercia is no better than she should be,’ laughed another. ‘Perhaps she was _too_ good,’ remarked a third. ‘Which way?’ inquired his friend, poking him with his elbow. ‘That the evidence must show,’ replied another of the coterie. ‘Was there ever a case where the honest, downright truth was given on either side? I never knew one,’ emphatically declared another of the group. ‘It has been the same through all time,’ he added after a pause, ‘for an eminent judge of the nineteenth century averred that throughout the whole course of his long experience on the woolsack he had never come across a case where the evidence was not, in more or less degree, suppressed.’ ‘The world’s stage keeps pretty much the same all through the piece; humanity is very human yet;’ sighed a white-haired old gentleman, with a very sweet expression on his countenance.