The King's Talisman — page 113: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 THE KING’S TALISMAN. CHAPTER XIV. THE COUNSELOR ONCE MORE IN THE TRAP. Though the king of Petra was invested with absolute power over the affairs of his realm, yet there were two men in his kingdom with whom he feared to come in civil con- tact. ‘These were Moran and Véforus, the two censors of the people. At first they had been elected by the citizens as overseers of the public morals only, but gradually they became arbiters in petty suits of individual rights, and at length, by a common consent among the people, matters of a graver import, not involving any state affairs were left to their decision, until they had actually become the dis- pensers of common justice in the city. At first Modad had looked with satisfaction upon the growing duties of the two censors, for it removed considerable weight from his own shoulders, and he was not troubled with those small affairs which his predecessor had always attended to in person; but he saw not, however, how much power he was gradually los- ing—he saw not, until the thing had gone too far for remedy, how much he was slowly, but surely, losing the respect of his subjects. At the time of which we write, Modad knew little of the affairs of the citizens, excepting that they paid their taxes regularly, and that he received but little trouble from their presence; but as his own net of wickedness began to draw closer about him, he realized how much authority he had allowed to slip from his fingers; he began to understand that a monarch’s throne is firm and stable only when it is sustained by the affections of the peo- ple, and he knew full well that he possessed but little, if any, of that requisite; but still Modad had determined upon (E(o) ‘comicbooks