Never before had they such a titbit to offer their employers as was now their good luck to possess. A love scene between their Emperor and his astronomer, delivered in a dialogue wherein the actual voices were reproduced was a treat not to be met with every day.
At least a hundred delicate voice-recorders had caught the sound-waves from Sadbag’s phonograph, and borrowing the tones of Felicitas and Mercia in their never-to-be-forgotten colloquy, gave them a value unprecedented in all time. As soon as it got abroad that their proprietors were in possession of these treasures, hundreds of speculators offered enormous prices for their purchase, with a view of reeling out their contents to admiring and appreciative audiences throughout the globe.
These offers proved, indeed, too tempting to be resisted, so that in the course of a week or two, India, together with many distant parts, was in the enjoyment of the actual love scene that took place at Greenwich Observatory, the most unlikely of all places for such an incident to happen in.
The Great Test Tournament had been fought and won by the Easterners. Their freedom now achieved, there remained only the nomination and coronation of a Supreme Ruler to go through, the responsibility of which weighed heavily upon the mind of the Indian Parliamentarians.
It was ultimately decided however, that their first Monarch should be elected by the vote of the whole nation, independently of all claims of royal descent made by members of the native aristocracy.
The interesting news of Felicitas’ unsuccessful love suit having been brought to the ears of the people so graphically through the medium of the voice-recorders, created an intense excitement in their mind, at all times so sensitive to every emotion.
It brought out Mercia’s character in such vivid colours that she appeared to them mentally projected on a living reflector. In their intense imagination, they saw her before them uttering in her melodious dream-like voice her now famous rhapsody; the tenderness of which appealing to their hearts, stirred up their deepest emotions.
But when they arrived at her indignant refusal of the Emperor’s offer to put away his wife, and give her the crown of his Consort, the climax was reached, and the enthusiasm of the people found vent in loud cries of—‘Mercia for ever! Long live Mercia, our Empress!’
And so the cry spreading itself through every quarter of that vast Empire was caught up in wild delight—Long live Mercia, our Empress, being echoed from every part, by people of every caste and every creed. But when the intelligence reached this impressionable people that Mercia, the greatest Astronomer, and noblest woman the world had ever seen, was about to enter into a matrimonial alliance with Dayanand Swami, the actual lineal descendant of The Great Mogul Dynasty, which governed India from the early centuries downwards, that settled the question.
In the course of the discussion upon the subject, which took place in the House of Parliament at Calcutta, Sir John Punjaub their well-beloved minister said—‘Now is this matter settled to our utmost satisfaction and content. In Dayanand Swami we have the direct descendant of India’s greatest, wisest, and most beneficent Ruler, the renowned Abkar, who was the son of Humayun, who was the son of Baber, the founder of the Great Royal Dynasty in the fifteenth century.