--SUETONIUS, p. 141.
"Indubitable" is a strong word, but no doubt it was justified, if the
livers were really turned that way. In those days chicken livers were
strangely and delicately sensitive to coming events, no matter how far
off they might be; and they could never keep still, but would curl and
squirm like that, particularly when vultures came and showed interest in
that approaching great event and in breakfast.
II
We may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years, which brings us
down to enlightened Christian times and the troubled days of King Stephen
of England. The augur has had his day and has been long ago forgotten;
the priest had fallen heir to his trade.
King Henry is dead; Stephen, that bold and outrageous person, comes
flying over from Normandy to steal the throne from Henry's daughter. He
accomplished his crime, and Henry of Huntington, a priest of high degree,
mourns over it in his Chronicle. The Archbishop of Canterbury
consecrated Stephen: "wherefore the Lord visited the Archbishop with the
same judgment which he had inflicted upon him who struck Jeremiah the
great priest: he died with a year."
Stephen's was the greater offense, but Stephen could wait; not so the
Archbishop, apparently.
The kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine
spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress, horror, and woe rose
in every quarter.
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