"Tamarida is filled to overflowing with your loyal subjects," commented the Arch-priest; "who are all agog to behold to-morrow's function; and even now the town is hourly receiving innumerable visitors from the country districts and from your Majesty's second city of Zapyro, which is ever jealous of the capital for its possession of the person of the Child of the Sun." He paused for a moment to give me another of those arch glances from his kindly, humorous old eyes; but I only nodded and smiled amiably. "Thousands of faithful citizens too from your Majesty's colonies on the wild rocky coasts of Barbaria yonder to the north (and he waved his arm to indicate some distant land beyond the enclosing hills) are hastening hither to behold the reincarnation of the Child of the Sun, concerning whom their parents have doubtless told them wonderful tales. See those boats with bellying sails that are even now entering the harbour's mouth; they are all freighted with excited pilgrims, men, women and children, drawn hither to assist at a spectacle of outward splendour and interior sanctity that your Earth, notwithstanding its illimitable wealth and its superior population, cannot produce. They tell me (and here the old man's eyes again twinkled mischievously) that one of your own many religious cults is ruled by a priest who claims and receives divine honours. He is said to be elected by a college of saintly and venerable brother priests, and to be borne aloft with pomp and acclamation on the shoulders of men of noble birth. I have, of course, never seen the ceremonies of modern Rome (which city I hold in especial esteem as having been in ancient times the origin of our official written language), but in this one crucial instance this consecration of an earthly high priest must yield to ours. For there is (so I am informed) no unanimity of opinion, no universal acceptance of the chosen pontiff; whilst here the King who is provided by our hierarchy is acknowledged by all without hesitation or limit as the connecting link between the divine and the human, whose presence is absolutely essential to the welfare of his subjects. Our King is the peculiar guerdon of our sole Deity the Sun to his favoured people, on whom from time to time he deigns to bestow a member of his own family for guidance and example."