In my own days and among my own people gold was held precious only for its beauty and its usefulness. We had not learned the art of making it into money and buying men's soul and bodies with it, but I had already lived enough of my new life to see that now, save for the few, gold was all and honour nothing; and knowing this, I should also have known what I was doing when I showed Djama the treasures in the Hall of Gold. The sight of them had made him mad, and, as my hand had shown them to him, the blame of what he had done in his madness was in part mine. All this I remembered in the hour when my soul was filled with joy and my heart warm with love, and I thought how great a pleasure I should give to her who had given me the better part of my own joy if I looked upon Djama with pity and forgiveness and did an act of mercy as the first deed of my new reign. So, when the ceremonial of my crowning was over, I bade Tupac take some of my body-guard and bring him before me from the place where he had been lodged after his release from his golden cell, and at the same time I quieted the fears of Joyful Star by telling her what was in my heart concerning him. They brought him unbound, but well guarded by soldiers with bayonets on their rifles, up the broad avenue which the parted throng had made across the square in front of my throne. I saw him stare wildly about him as he came near, gazing at the splendid sun-lit pageant like a man in a dream, or one just awakened into another world, as I had been after my long death-sleep. But when he came near, and saw me sitting in my royal state with Joyful Star on my right and Golden Star on my left, both robed as princesses of the Ancient Blood, his face grew dark with passion, and his eyes, losing their wonder, gazed in fixed and furious hate at me--the man who was going to give him his life, and much more that he had coveted besides. They placed him between two soldiers before me at the foot of the terrace steps above which my throne had been set, and I was about to speak and greet him kindly, when his anger already got the better of him, and, with a mocking smile on his lips, he said in a loud, rough voice that was most unlike his own quiet, even tones,-- 'Well, your Majesty, as I suppose you think yourself for the present, I expected something like this--to be brought out into the midst of your fellow-savages and sentenced like a felon before my own sister and the woman who, like yourself, owes her life to me!' Then he laughed one of his strange, joyless laughs, and went on before I could reply,-- 'Well, I suppose I mustn't grumble. You have won, and to the victor go the spoils. Now that you have apparently bought the girl who was once my sister with your gold, and I have given you your own sister-wife back, you will be able to try an interesting experiment in your old form of matrimony--'