worms, bred in their own tendrils."

"Drop, drop your grapes and metaphors!" cried Media. "Bring forth your
thoughts like men; let them come naked into Mardi.--What do you mean,
Babbalanja?"

"This, my lord, Verdanna's worst evils are her own, not of another's
giving. Her own hand is her own undoer. She stabs herself with
bigotry, superstition, divided councils, domestic feuds, ignorance,
temerity; she wills, but does not; her East is one black storm-cloud,
that never bursts; her utmost fight is a defiance; she showers
reproaches, where she should rain down blows. She stands a mastiff
baying at the moon."

"Tropes on tropes!" said. Media. "Let me tell the tale,--straight-
forward like a line. Verdanna is a lunatic--"

"A trope! my lord," cried Babbalanja.

"My tropes are not tropes," said Media, "but yours are.--Verdanna is a
lunatic, that after vainly striving to cut another's throat,
grimaces before a standing pool and threatens to cut his own. And is
such a madman to be intrusted with himself? No; let another govern
him, who is ungovernable to himself Ay, and tight hold the rein; and
curb, and rasp the bit. Do I exaggerate?--Mohi, tell me, if, save one
lucid interval, Verdanna, while independent of Dominora, ever
discreetly conducted her affairs? Was she not always full of fights
and factions? And what first brought her under the sway of Bello's
scepter? Did not her own Chief Dermoddi fly to Bello's ancestor for
protection against his own seditious subjects? And thereby did not her