CHAPTER XIV.
THE PARLIAMENT OF PANDAPOLIS.
Two or three days were now to elapse, and then the time would come, if the all-powerful Demon should be for once true to his word, when I should be breathing again the delicious air of my beloved mountains, and climbing to their tops beneath the sunny canopy of heaven. I had a vague hope, too, but only a vague one, that my kind friend Julius would also be able, by some master-stroke of policy, of which I thought his extraordinary talents and fearless energy made him fully capable, to accompany me in my aerial flight out of this black and horrible abyss. I regarded him as a wonderfully clever magician, who could call at will spirits from the vasty deep, and, what is more, make them obey his call. I attributed to his power the sudden and complete dissolution of the court of the mighty potentate in which I was about to become such a prominent actor. The lesson to be learned from that strange scene, which we should all seriously and gratefully lay to heart, is that we are not now living under an absolute monarch, who has either the power or the will to make himself a scourge and a terror to his subjects.
A thousand times I asked myself how the Doctor, who has become the hero of my story nearly to the exclusion of the Demon himself, gained his terrible power. We have
