The agitation for the Universal Colour Bill continued for three years; and up to the last
moment of that period it seemed as though Anarchy were destined to triumph.
A whole army of Polygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers, was utterly
annihilated by a superior force of Isosceles Triangles -- the Squares and Pentagons
meanwhile remaining neutral. Worse than all, some of the ablest Circles fell a prey to
conjugal fury. Infuriated by political animosity, the wives in many a noble household
wearied their lords with prayers to give up their opposition to the Colour Bill; and some,
finding their entreaties fruitless, fell on and slaughtered their innocent children and
husband, perishing themselves in the act of carnage. It is recorded that during that
triennial agitation no less than twenty-three Circles perished in domestic discord.
Great indeed was the peril. It seemed as though the Priests had no choice between
submission and extermination; when suddenly the course of events was completely
changed by one of those picturesque incidents which Statesmen ought never to neglect,
often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly
disproportionate power with which they appeal to the sympathies of the populace.
It happened that an Isosceles of a low type, with a brain little if at all above four degrees -
- accidentally dabbling in the colours of some Tradesman whose shop he had plundered --
painted himself, or caused himself to be painted (for the story varies) with the twelve
colours of a Dodecagon. Going into the Market Place he accosted in a feigned voice a
maiden, the orphan daughter of a noble Polygon, whose affection in former days he had
sought in vain; and by a series of deceptions -- aided, on the one side, by a string of lucky
accidents too long to relate, and on the other, by an almost inconceivable fatuity and
neglect of ordinary precautions on the part of the relations of the bride -- he succeeded in
consummating the marriage. The unhappy girl committed suicide on discovering the
fraud to which she had been subjected.
When the news of this catastrophe spread from State to State the minds of the Women
were violently agitated. Sympathy with the miserable victim and anticipations of similar
deceptions for themselves, their sisters, and their daughters, made them now regard the
Colour Bill in an entirely new aspect. Not a few openly avowed themselves converted to
antagonism; the rest needed only a slight stimulus to make a similar avowal. Seizing this
favourable opportunity, the Circles hastily convened an extraordinary Assembly of the
States; and besides the usual guard of Convicts, they secured the attendance of a large
number of reactionary Women.
Amidst an unprecedented concourse, the Chief Circle of those days -- by name
Pantocyclus -- arose to find himself hissed and hooted by a hundred and twenty thousand
Isosceles. But he secured silence by declaring that henceforth the Circles would enter on
a policy of Concession; yielding to the wishes of the majority, they would accept the
Colour Bill. The uproar being at once converted to applause, he invited Chromatistes, the
