HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
101 
consort of Radama.* Here are also the houses allotted 
to those who are nominally the wives of the sovereign, 
and another surrounded by a fence, which is merely an 
occasional seraglio, without the strictness or refinements 
of Turkish despotism, jealousy, or sensuality. 
But, as if to show that man in his best estate is vanity, 
as if he were destined to place some curb on his own 
desires, to erect some “ memento mori” in the midst of 
his pleasures and grandeur—here, in sight of these houses 
of power and enjoyment, are the tombs, the dilapidated 
tombs, of former chieftains and kings. 
In the immediate neighbourhood of the palace are the 
houses of several of the judges, the nobles, and the prin¬ 
cipal officers in the army, constituting this part of the 
town, <c comp mere par v a cum magnis” the Westminster 
of Tananarivo. 
On the western side of the palace-yard, the judges 
hold their courts. The causes are tried in the open air, 
either in true patriarchal style, beneath the shadow of 
the fine row of fig-trees growing there, or on the stone¬ 
wall of the fence already described. Formerly the 
judges met to hear causes, deliberate, and administer 
justice, in a house, not exposed to the gaze of the rude 
or curious. On an occasion, however, not many years 
since, the king was passing by the house in which the 
judges were assembled, when the latter omitted to rise 
and pay his majesty the usual tokens of homage, either 
not seeing, or pretending not to see the king: Radama 
tenacious of respect, and believing, with a Spanish monarch, 
that “ no ceremony should be deemed a trifle, since the 
* Radama, on his marriage with Rasalimo, the Sakalava princess, re¬ 
quested the Missionary to relinquish the house in her favour, promising 1 , 
at the same time, to furnish him with materials for another. 
