'My good friend the Begum of the Cannibal Islands has more than she knows what to do with; and she owes me a good turn, you know.' 'What are you jesting about now?' 'Did I never tell you? The new king of the Cannibal Islands, just like your European ones, ran away, and would neither govern himself nor let any one else govern; so one morning his ministers, getting impatient, ate him, and then asked my advice. I recommended them to put his mother on the throne, who, being old and tough, would run less danger; and since then everything has gone on smoothly as anywhere else.' 'Are you mad?' thought Lancelot to himself, as he stared at the speaker's matter-of-fact face. 'No, I am not mad, my young friend,' quoth he, facing right round upon him, as if he had divined his thoughts. 'I--I beg your pardon, I did not speak,' stammered Lancelot, abashed at a pair of eyes which could have looked down the boldest mesmerist in three seconds. 'I am perfectly well aware that you did not. I must have some talk with you: I've heard a good deal about you. You wrote those articles in the --- Review about George Sand, did you not?' 'I did.' 'Well, there was a great deal of noble feeling in them, and a great deal of abominable nonsense. You seem to be very anxious to reform society?' 'I am.' 'Don't you think you had better begin by reforming yourself?' 'Really, sir,' answered Lancelot, 'I am too old for that worn-out quibble. The root of all my sins has been selfishness and sloth. Am I to cure them by becoming still more selfish and slothful? What part of myself can I reform except my actions? and the very sin of my actions has been, as I take it, that I've been doing nothing to reform others; never fighting against the world, the flesh, and the devil, as your Prayer-book has it.' 'MY Prayer-book?' answered the stranger, with a quaint smile. 'Upon my word, Lancelot,' interposed the banker, with a frightened look, 'you must not get into an argument: you must be more respectful: you don't know to whom you are speaking.' 'And I don't much care,' answered he. 'Life is really too grim earnest in these days to stand on ceremony. I am sick of blind leaders of the blind, of respectable preachers to the respectable, who drawl out second-hand trivialities, which they neither practise nor wish to see practised. I've had enough all my life of Scribes and Pharisees in white cravats, laying on man heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and then not touching them themselves with one of their fingers.' 'Silence, sir!' roared the banker, while the stranger threw himself into a chair, and burst into a storm of laughter. 'Upon my word, friend Mammon, here's another of Hans Andersen's ugly ducks!' 'I really do not mean to be rude,' said Lancelot, recollecting himself, 'but I am nearly desperate. If your heart is in the right place, you will understand me! if not, the less we talk to each other the better.'