In this fashion, then, the troops paraded the principal streets of the city, while young girls and tiny children strewed flowers before them in the roadway, and the populace cheered and applauded, until the spacious park in which stood the palace and the House of Legislature was reached, when a halt was called before the principal entrance of the palace, where the Queen, once more in radiant health, came forth and, in a few well-chosen words, expressed her fervent gratitude to all the brave men who had borne themselves so nobly and gallantly in the defence of their country, winding up with an expression of admiration and sorrow for the fallen, and of sympathy for those whom the relentless cruelty of war had bereaved of their nearest and dearest. Then Malachi and his fellow Elders appeared and pronounced a long oration of a very similar character, but going somewhat more into detail. He dwelt particularly upon the fierce, undying animosity with which the savages of the surrounding nations had regarded the presence of the Izreelites in the country from time immemorial, reminded his hearers of the state of almost perpetual warfare in which the nation had lived through the ages, and described the recent attack as the most virulent and determined that they had ever experienced, being nothing less than a carefully elaborated and well-ordered plan for their complete extermination. Then he touched upon the arrival of the two young Englishmen in the country, spoke of the law prohibiting the admission of strangers, and fully explained the reasons which had led to an exception being made in their case, and congratulated himself and everybody else upon the happy issue of that exception, going on to say that but for the warlike knowledge and skill of the visitors, and the superlative importance of the parts which they had played in planning and carrying out the scheme of defence, that day of triumph and glory for Izreel would never have dawned. And he wound up by saying that, in acknowledgment and recognition of the enormously important and valuable services which these young men had rendered to the nation, he and his fellow Elders had felt it to be their duty to recommend the Queen to confer upon both the honour and distinction accompanying the title of Princes. A roar of delighted approval greeted this peroration; and if perchance there happened to be here and there a noble or two who regarded with disapprobation the bestowal of this unique honour upon aliens, they were too prudent to permit that disapprobation to be suspected, in view of the apparently universal popularity of the act.