“What I give you full permission to do,” replied Mangogul smartly, “is to respect good sense beyond my highness, and to tell me sincerely, if an eloquent man can ever dispense himself from showing some signs of it.”

“No, prince,” answered Ricaric, and he was going to string up a long bead-roll of authorities, and cite all the rhetoricians of Afric, the two Arabias, and China, in order to prove the most incontestable thing in the world, when he was interrupted by Selim.