"You may, Sir, and I will tell you. You yourself make us embark in a conversation on the _Belles-Lettres_: you begin by a piece of modern eloquence, which is not extraordinary; and when, to oblige you, we prepare to pursue the disagreeable argument which you have started, you are seized with uneasiness and yawning, you teize yourself in your seat, you change your posture a hundred times, without finding one easy one: tired in fine of keeping your countenance, tho' a sad one, you come to a sudden resolution, you get up and disappear: and then, whither do you go? Perhaps to give ear to a Toy!" "I own the fact, madam, but I see nothing in it that should give offence. If a man happens to be disgusted at fine things, and amuse himself with hearing bad, so much the worse for him. This unjust preference takes nothing from the merit of what he has quitted: he only declares himself a bad judge. To this I could add, madam, that while you were labouring hard at Selim's conversion, I was working with no better success to procure you a castle. In fine, if I must be culpable, since you have pronounc'd me so, I can assure you that you have had your revenge at the very time." "Pray, how that?" said the favorite. "Thus it is," answered the Sultan. "In order to refresh myself from the fatigue of the academical sitting which I had undergone, I went to examine some Toys."----"Well, prince"----"Well, I never heard such insipid creatures as the two which I light upon."----"This gives me the highest joy," replied the favorite.----They both fell to talking an unintelligible language. I have perfectly well retained every thing they said; but let me die, if I understand a word of it. CHAP. XXXVI. _Eighteenth and nineteenth trials of the Ring._ The flatted Spheroïd, and Girgiro the entangled: catch who can. "That is singular," continued the favorite. "Till this moment, I always imagined, that the chief fault found with Toys, was their speaking too plainly." "Oh! madam," replied Mangogul, "these two are not of that tribe; understand them who can. "You know that little crumpling of woman, whose head is sunk into her shoulders, whose arms are hardly to be seen, and whose legs are so short, and her belly so lank, that one might mistake her for a hedge-hog, for a clumsy ill-develop'd embryo, who bears the the nick-name of the _flatted Spheroïd_; who has filled her head with a notion that Brama called her to the study of geometry, because he has given her the figure of a bowl; and who consequently might have chosen the profession of artillery: for considering her make, she must have issued out of nature's bosom, as a bullet out of the mouth of a cannon.