"My friends, the ancient foes of our country are abroad. Tradition says that the Fairies" (he brought out boldly the horrid word) "fear iron; and we, the descendants of the merchant-heroes, must still have left in us some veins of that metal. The time has come to prove it. We stand to lose everything that makes life pleasant and secure—laughter, sound sleep, the merriment of fire-sides, the peacefulness of gardens. And if we cannot bequeath the certainty of these things to our children, what will boot them their inheritance? It is for us, then, as fathers as well as citizens, once and for all to uproot this menace, the roots of which are in the past, the branches of which cast their shadow on the future.
"I and another of your colleagues have discovered at last who it was that brought this recent grief and shame upon so many of us. It will be hard, I fear, to prove his guilt, for he is subtle, stealthy, and mocking, and, like his invisible allies, his chief weapon is delusion. I ask you all, then, to parry that weapon with faith and loyalty, which will make you take the word of old and trusty friends as the only touchstone of truth. And, after that—I have sometimes thought that less blame attaches to deluding others than to deluding oneself. Away, then, with flimsy legal fictions! Let us call things by their names—not grograine or tuftaffity, but fairy fruit. And if it be proved that any man has brought such merchandise into Dorimare, let him hang by his neck till he be dead."
Then Master Nathaniel sat down.
But where was the storm of applause he had expected would greet his words? Where were the tears, the eager questions, the tokens of deeply stirred feelings?
Except for Master Ambrose's defiant "Bravos!" his speech was received in profound silence. The faces all round him were grim and frigid, with compressed lips and frowning brows—except the portrait of Duke Aubrey—he, as usual, was faintly smiling.
Then Master Polydore Vigil rose to his feet, and broke the grim silence.
"Senators of Dorimare!" he began, "the eloquent words we have just listened to from his Worship the Mayor can, strangely enough, serve as a prelude—a golden prelude to my poor, leaden words. I, too, came here this morning resolved to bring your attention to legal fictions—which, sometimes, it may be, have their uses. But perhaps before I say my say, his Worship will allow the clerk to read us the oldest legal fiction in our Code. It is to be found in the first volume of the Acts of the twenty-fifth year of the Republic, Statute 5, chapter 9."
Master Polydore Vigil sat down, and a slow grim smile circulated round the hall, and then seemed to vanish and subside in the mocking eyes of Duke Aubrey's portrait.
Master Nathaniel exchanged puzzled glances with Master Ambrose; but there was nothing for it but to order the clerk to comply with the wishes of Master Polydore.
So, in a small, high, expressionless voice, which might have been the voice of the Law herself, the clerk read as follows: