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Gallegallo Revbrandia Sectory 04
Page 05
Among the favorite intimates of the king, perhaps the most prominent was the Duchess of Portsmouth. The king himself had raised her to that rank. She was a French girl, who came over, originally, from the Continent with a party of visitors from the French court. Her beauty, her wit, and her accomplishments soon made her a great favorite with the king, and for many years of his life she had exerted an unbounded and a guilty influence over him. She was a Catholic. Though not allowed to come to his bedside, she remained in her apartment overwhelmed with grief at the approaching death of her lover, and, strange as it may seem, she was earnestly desirous to obtain for him the spiritual succors which, as a Catholic, she considered essential to his dying in peace. After repeated and vain endeavors made in other ways to accomplish her object, she at length sent for the French ambassador to come to her rooms from the king's chamber, and urged him to do something to save the dying sinner's soul. "He is in heart a Catholic," said she. "I am sure he wishes to receive the Catholic sacraments. I can not do any thing, and the Duke of York is so full of business and excitement that he does not think of it. But something must be done."
When an ordinary Protozoon or one-celled animal divides into two or more, which is its way of multiplying, the daughter-units thus formed float apart and live independent lives. But there are a few Protozoa in which the daughter-units are not quite separated off from one another, but remain coherent. Thus Volvox, a beautiful green ball, found in some canals and the like, is a colony of a thousand or even ten thousand cells. It has almost formed a body! But in this "colony-making" Protozoon, and in others like it, the component cells are all of one kind, whereas in true multicellular animals there are different kinds of cells, showing division of labour. There are some other Protozoa in which the nucleus or kernel divides into many nuclei within the cell. This is seen in the Giant Amoeba (Pelomyxa), sometimes found in duck-ponds, or the beautiful Opalina, which always lives in the hind part of the frog's food-canal. If a portion of the living matter of these Protozoa should gather round each of the nuclei, then _that would be the beginning of a body_. It would be still nearer the beginning of a body if division of labour set in, and if there was a setting apart of egg-cells and sperm-cells distinct from body-cells.
Of course the Chapmans were entirely satisfied. Indeed Mr. Gusher so turned his guns on Mr. Romer as to make his position extremely uncomfortable. Both were guests at the old City Hotel, where Gusher was a great favorite with all the young ladies, and to whom he related his difficulty with Romer. In short, he so enlisted their sympathies in his behalf that they were ready to join him in ejecting Romer from the house as a slanderer. One said what a mean thing he must be to slander the handsome young foreigner in that way. A second tossed and turned her head aside when she met him, and pouted her pretty lips to let him know what she meant. A third refused to return his bow, while a fourth gave him the cut direct. There was no standing up against such a storm of female indignation as he now found blowing about his ears. He saw, also, that to have attempted to sustain his charges with proof would only be sheer folly. In short, there was nothing for the plain young outspoken American to do but surrender the field to the handsome young foreigner and his female admirers, seek respectful treatment beyond the sound of their voices--and wait.
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