“‘No doubt,’ I answered, ‘but what has that to do with it?’
“‘Why,’ said he, in sudden anger (for this kind of learned man is commonly half-mad) ‘it has everything to do with it! Such advantages can only come from the secure rule of the rich.... A fool could see that!’
“I soothed him by immediate agreement, professed my admiration at his vast store of knowledge and pumped him all that afternoon on Dirak.
“It seemed that in this admirable region the Rich rule unquestioned to the immense profit of the State. The Sultan is kept on a strict allowance that he may be the puppet of the great merchants, bankers and landholders who are the masters of the Commonwealth and him. The middle classes are allowed a livelihood but no possessions, and are proud of their small incomes, which usually put them above the artizans; while the populace are content to swarm in hovels underground, to work hard all day and all the year round for a little food and to revere and acclaim the rich with frenzied cheers upon all public occasions. Laws and proclamations are purchased, and their administration is in the hands of the rich, of whom a select few sit upon the bench and condemn a fixed number of the populace, and a few of the middle classes, to imprisonment every year by way of discipline and example. No man possessing more than a hundred thousand gold pieces worth of land or stock can be punished, and if a poor man tell any unpleasing thing of such a one he is beaten till he admits his falsehood or, if he prove obstinate, slowly starved to death.
“It is a model State. All is in perfect order. The palaces of the rulers are the most magnificent in the world: all public office is faithfully and punctually performed. It is the envy of every neighbour, the pride and delight of every citizen however mean; for—what is the basis of the whole affair—every man in Dirak is esteemed by the extent of his possessions alone; writing and music and work in metals and painted tiles are esteemed for the pretty things they are: holiness is revered indeed, but confined to the well-to-do; and a man’s virtue, judgment and wit are rightly gauged by his property.
“My many adventures had somewhat blunted me to new sensations. But I confess (my dear nephews) that as I heard this tale an ecstasy filled my soul. I masked my emotions and simply said, ‘An interesting place!’
“‘It is reached by a plain road from here,’ volunteered the Learned Man, ‘though at the expense of a long journey: for it takes a caravan quite a month to reach the capital of Dirak from this place. You go up the river to its source in the hills, a week’s travel to the east; then the well-marked road leads you over a pass to a most singular cup or natural cauldron, with a flat, highly cultivated floor, formerly the bed of a lake and surrounded on all sides by precipitous limestone cliffs, down which the road descends by artificial cuttings in their surface. This strangely isolated spot, famous for its gardens and simple happiness, is called with its chief village Skandir, and strangers are there most hospitably entertained.
“‘The only issue thence, on the far side, is by a narrow gorge leading through the mountains, beyond which again are vast plains of grassy lands, the grazing place of nomads: well watered and provisioned at reasonable distances by simple but well furnished villages. The great road goes through all these, still eastward.
“‘These prairies get drier and drier as they rise eastward until, for the last day of your progress, at the wells of Ayn-ayoum you must take a supply of water, for the next twenty-four hours are desert. You reach a crest of the slow ascent and see below you from the summit of the road some half a day’s going across the plain below, the magnificent capital of Dirak.