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 CHAPTER XXI

THE SETTING SUN

many days, every effort had been made by the schemers in the Wat to kindle anew, among the people of Angkor, the fiery religious enthusiasm by which, so short a while before, they one and all had been consumed.

Chun's despotism had gathered around it, not only the mob of ruffianly quarrymen who were its undisciplined army, and the sweepings of those men of the warrior caste who had straggled back to the capital after the disastrous encounter with the invading barbarians, but also a number of pseudo-scholars and pandits, tale- bearers and spies—men who possessed a little more learning, wit, or cunning than their fellows, and who, in this hour of rising scum, came naturally to the surface. This band of panders and sycophants with one eye cocked upon their master, the better to anticipate his pleasure, and the other watching the wind, as it played among the straws, lest by some sudden gust of popular feeling their cockle-boats should be taken aback—had of late been busy. They were ubiquitous—