"Willing to receive informations from her Toy, I examined it. But the vorticose creature spoke in terms of such sublime geometry, that I did not understand one word, nor perhaps did it understand its own language. It was nothing but right lines, concave surfaces, given quantities, longitude, latitude, profundity, solids, living forces, dead forces, cone, cylinder, conic sections, curves, elastic curves, curve re-entring into itself, with its point conjugated----" "I pray your highness to excuse me from the rest," cried the favorite mournfully. "You have a cruel memory, enough to put one to death. It has raised a swimming in my head, which I dare say I shall not get rid of these eight days. But was the other so diverting?" "You shall be the judge," replied Mangogul. "By Brama's great toe, I have performed a prodigy. I have retain'd its motly gibberish word for word, tho' it be so thoroughly void of sense and perspicuity, that if you give me a subtile and critical explanation of it, madam, you will make me an acceptable present." "How have you said, prince?" cried Mirzoza. "Let me die, if you have not stolen that phrase from somebody." "I can't tell how it has happened," replied Mangogul: "for these two Toys are the only persons to whom I have given audience this day. The last, on whom I turned my ring, after a moment's silence, said, as if addressing an audience, "'Gentlemen, "'I shall take the liberty to avoid seeking, to the contempt of my own reason, a model of thinking and expressing myself. But yet if I advance any thing new, it shall not be affectation, but the subject shall have furnished me with it: if I repeat what has been already said, it will be my own thought, as well as it has been that of others. Let not irony come to turn this preamble into ridicule, and accuse me of either not having read, or of having read to no purpose. A Toy like me is not made for reading, or profiting by its reading, or foreseeing an objection, or answering it. "'I shall not debar myself of reflections and ornaments proportioned to my subject; the rather because in this regard it is extremely modest, and will not admit of any great quantity or brilliancy. But I will avoid sinking into those little minute details, which fall to the share of the barren orator. It would be cause of great grief to me to be suspected of this defect. "'After having informed ye, gentlemen, of what you are to expect from my discoveries and elocution, some few strokes of the pencil will be sufficient, to sketch you out my character. "'You know, gentlemen, as well as I, that there are two sorts of Toys: proud Toys and modest Toys. The former are haughty, and always expect the place of honour. The latter affect to be courteous, and present themselves with an air of submission. These two intentions appear manifestly in the execution of their projects, and determine both sorts to act according to the genius that guides them.