I feel I seem always less than partial to the lovable Laupepa; his virtues are perhaps not those which chiefly please me, and are certainly not royal; but he found on his return an opportunity to display the admirable sweetness of his nature.

The two entered into a competition of generosity, for which I can recall no parallel in history, each waiving the throne for himself, each pressing it upon his rival; and they embraced at last a compromise the terms of which seem to have been always obscure and are now disputed.
Laupepa at least resumed his style of King of Samoa; Mataafa retained much of the conduct of affairs, and continued to receive much of the attendance and respect befitting royalty; and the two Malietoas, with so many causes of disunion, dwelt and met together in the same town like kinsmen.

It was so, that I first saw them; so, in a house set about with sentries--for there was still a haunting fear of Germany,--that I heard them relate their various experience in the past; heard Laupepa tell with touching candour of the sorrows of his exile, and Mataafa with mirthful simplicity of his resources and anxieties in the war.

The relation was perhaps too beautiful to last; it was perhaps impossible but the titular king should grow at last uneasily conscious of the _maire de palais_ at his side, or the king-maker be at last offended by some shadow of distrust or assumption in his creature.

I repeat the words king-maker and creature; it is so that Mataafa himself conceives of their relation: surely not without justice; for, had he not contended and prevailed, and been helped by the folly of consuls and the fury of the storm, Laupepa must have died in exile.
Foreigners in these islands know little of the course of native intrigue.
Partly the Samoans cannot explain, partly they will not tell.