"Phlebotomize until she is reduced to the last point of safety. Let it be effected, if necessary, in a warm bath. When she is reduced to a state of perfect asphyxy, apply a ligature to the left ancle, drawing it as tight as the bone will bear. Apply, at the same moment, another of equal tension around the right wrist. By means of plates constructed for the purpose, place the other foot and hand under the receivers of two air-pumps. Exhaust the receivers. Exhibit a pint of French brandy, and await the result.' "'Which would presently arrive in the form of grim Death,' said Kopy-Keck. "'If it should, she would yet die in doing our duty,' retorted Hum-Drum. "But their Majesties had too much tenderness for their volatile offspring to subject her to either of the schemes of the equally unscrupulous philosophers. Indeed the most complete knowledge of the laws of nature would have been unserviceable in her case; for it was impossible to classify her. She was a fifth imponderable body, sharing all the other properties of the ponderable. * * * * * "CHAPTER VIII.--TRY A DROP OF WATER. "Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been falling in love. But how a princess who had no gravity at all, could fall into anything, is a difficulty--perhaps _the_ difficulty. As for her own feelings on the subject, she did not even know that there was such a bee-hive of honey and stings to be fallen into. And now I come to mention another curious fact about her.