We even succeeded in demonstrating the
principle of the steam-engine to a gathering of the learned men,
who were filled with amazement; and several other things of the
same sort we did. And so it came about that the people made
up their minds that we must on no account be allowed to go out
of the country (which indeed was an apparent impossibility even
if we had wished it), and we were advanced to great honour and
made officers to the bodyguards of the sister Queens while permanent
quarters were assigned to us in the palace, and our opinion was
asked upon questions of national policy.
But blue as the sky seemed, there was a cloud, and a big one,
on the horizon. We had indeed heard no more of those confounded
hippopotami, but it is not on that account to be supposed that
our sacrilege was forgotten, or the enmity of the great and powerful
priesthood headed by Agon appeased. On the contrary, it was
burning the more fiercely because it was necessarily suppressed,
and what had perhaps begun in bigotry was ending in downright
direct hatred born of jealousy. Hitherto, the priests had been
the wise men of the land, and were on this account, as well as
from superstitious causes, looked on with peculiar veneration.
But our arrival, with our outlandish wisdom and our strange
inventions and hints of unimagined things, dealt a serious blow
to this state of affairs, and, among the educated Zu-Vendi, went
far towards destroying the priestly prestige.
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