A genius thoroughly wicked--such was Demedes.

Quick to see the disgust the young men of Constantinople had fallen into for the disputes their elders were indulging about the Churches, he proposed that they should discard religion, and reinstate philosophy; and at their request he formulated the following:

"Nature is the lawgiver; the happiness of man is the primary object of Nature: hence for youth, Pleasure; for old age, Repentance and Piety, the life hereafter being a respectable conjecture."

The principles thus tersely stated were eagerly adopted, and going forward with his scheme, it may be said the Academy was his design, and its organization his work. In recognition of his superior abilities, the grateful Academicians elected him their High Priest.

We have seen how the public received the motto of the society. Patience, Courage, Judgment looked fair and disclosed nothing wrong; but there was an important reservation to it really the only secret observed. This was the motto in full, known only to the initiated--Patience, Courage, Judgment in the pursuit of Pleasure.

From the hour of his installation as High Priest, Demedes was consumed by an ambition to illustrate the motto in its entirety, by doing something which should develop the three virtues in connection with unheard of daring and originality.

It is to be added here that to his own fortune, he had now the treasury of the Academy to draw upon, and it was full. In other words, he had ample means to carry out any project his judgment might approve.

He pondered the matter long. One day Lael chanced to fall under his observation. She was beautiful and the town talk. Here, he thought, was a subject worth studying, and speedily two mysteries presented themselves to him: Who was the Prince of India? And what was her true relationship to the Prince?

We pass over his resorts in unravelling the mysteries; they were many and cunning, and thoroughly tried the first virtue of the Academical motto; still the sum of his finding with respect to the Prince was a mere theory--he was a Jew and rich--beyond this Demedes took nothing for his pains.

He proceeded next to investigate Lael. She too was of Jewish origin, but unlike other Jewesses, wonderful to say, she had two fathers, the diamond merchant and the Prince of India.

Nothing better could be asked--so his judgment, the third virtue of the motto, decreed. In Byzantine opinion, Jews were socially outside decent regard. In brief, if he should pursue the girl to her ruin, there was little to fear from an appeal by either of her fathers to the authorities. Exile might be the extremest penalty of discovery.

He began operations by putting into circulation the calumny, too infamous for repetition, with which we have seen him attempt to poison Sergius. Robbing the victim of character would deprive her of sympathy, and that, in the event of failure, would be a half defence for himself with the public.

He gave himself next to finding what to do with the little Princess, as he termed her. All his schemes respecting her fell short in that they lacked originality. At last the story of the Plague of Crime, stumbled on in the library of the St. James', furnished a suggestion novel, if not original, and he accepted it.

Proceeding systematically, he first examined the cistern, paddling through it in a boat with a flambeau at the bow. He sounded the depth of the water, counted the pillars, and measured the spaces between them; he tested the purity of the air; and when the reconnoissance was through, he laughed at the simplicity of the idea, and embodied his decision in a saying eminently becoming his philosophic character--the best of every new thing is that it was once old.

Next he reduced the affair to its elements. He must steal her--such was the deed in simplest term--and he must have assistants, but prudence whispered just as few of them as possible. He commenced a list, heading it with the keeper of the cistern, whom he found poor, necessitous, and anxious to better his condition. Upon a payment received, that worthy became warmly interested, and surprised his employer with suggestions of practical utility.

Coming then to the abduction, he undertook a study of her daily life, hoping it would disclose something available. A second name was thereupon entered in his list of accomplices.

One day a beggar with sore eyes and a foot swollen with elephantiasis--an awful object to sight--set a stool in an angle of the street a few doors from Uel's house; and thenceforward the girl's every appearance was communicated to Demedes, who never forgot the great jump of heart with which he heard of the gorgeous chair presented her by the Prince, and of the visit she forthwith made to the wall of the Bucoleon.

Soon as he satisfied himself that the Bulgarians were in the Prince's pay, he sounded them. They too were willing to permit him to make them comfortable the remainder of their days, especially as, after the betrayal asked of them, they had only to take boat to the Turkish side of the Bosphorus, beyond pursuit and demand. His list of assistants was then increased to four.

Now indeed the game seemed secure, and he prepared for the hour which was to bring the Jewess to him.

The keeper of the cistern was the solitary occupant of a house built round a small court from which a flight of stone steps admitted to the darkened water. He had a felicitous turn for mechanics, and undertook the building of a raft with commodious rooms on it. Demedes went with him to select a place of anchorage, and afterward planned the structure to fit between four of the pillars in form thus:

[Illustration]

Seeing the design on paper, Demedes smiled--it was so like a cross; the part in lines being the landing, and the rest a room divisible at pleasure into three rooms. A boat was provided for communication, and to keep it hid from visitors, a cord was fixed to a pillar off in the darkness beyond ken, helped though it might be by torches; so standing on the stone steps, one could draw the vessel to and fro, exactly as a flag is hoisted or lowered on a staff.

The work took a long time, but was at last finished. The High Priest of the Epicureans came meantime to have something akin to tender feeling for his intended victim. He indulged many florid dreams of when she should grace his bower in the Imperial Cistern; and as the time of her detention might peradventure extend into months, he vowed to enrich the bower until the most wilful spirit would settle into contentment.

Neither the money nor the time spent in this part of the preparation was begrudged; on the contrary, Demedes took delight in the occupation; it was exercise for ingenuity, taste, and judgment, always a pleasure to such as possess the qualities. In fact, the whole way through he likened himself to a bird building a nest for its mate.

After all, however, the part of the project most troublesome of arrangement by the schemer, was getting the Princess into the cistern keeper's house--that is, without noise, scuffle, witnesses, or a clew left behind. To this he gave more hours of reflection than to the rest altogether. The method we have seen executed was decided upon when he arrived at two conclusions; that the attempt was most likely to succeed in the garden of the Bucoleon, and that the Princess must be lured from her chair into another less conspicuous and not so well known. Greatly to his regret, but of ............