When women have once exceeded the age of thirty (which is considered the child-bearing limit in Meleager), and have presumably lost all officially suspected attraction in the eyes of the Child of the Sun, the embargo is removed, though there is never much intercourse between the King and the middle-aged or elderly ladies of the nobility. Whenever I honour the country home of one of my nobles with my presence, all the young women of the household, married or unmarried, are removed elsewhere, but such as are above the fixed age of thirty are suffered to remain, though even in these cases I note that I am seldom left alone with women, no matter what their age. No doubt the female mind, so strongly imbued in childhood with the inherent mystical terrors of their monarch, still shrinks with awe from too close proximity with such a force of potential danger. Possibly, however, I may err on this point, and in reality some ancient notion of etiquette unknown to me is being served by this noticeable self-effacement on the part of the older women. Of course, the deference wherewith I am treated by the male folk is intensified in the case of the ladies, who regard me much in the same light that a bigoted Catholic would regard a tangible apparition of St Peter or St Paul in their houses. Politically, women possess no rights, but then no more do the men, except the handful who compose the executive council, so they cannot well complain of invidious treatment on this score, even were they anxious to discover grievances of sex. As with the historic Prussian queen, their empire admittedly lies in the nursery, for all children are completely under the charge of their mothers according to immemorial custom. In the nobility the tacit law seems to be that the man is master outside the house, whilst the woman is mistress within doors; and this maxim is generally acted upon throughout all spheres of social life. Women are exempt from the poll-tax, which is levied on all males, and indeed no taxes are exacted from women at all, except in the rare and transitory instances of unmarried heiresses of landed estates. Whether or no, vague, restless, unsatisfied aspirations and longings occasionally assail the minds of some of the younger men I cannot say for certain; but I do feel sure that the womanhood of Meleager is absolutely satisfied with its present lot and cannot so much as conceive of any betterment of existing conditions. The conversations I have had with the wives or sisters of my hosts at different times were usually of a rather stilted and uninteresting nature; but I never failed to note their supreme content and buoyant cheerfulness.