“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, though it be so thoroughly void of sense and perspicuity, that if you give me a subtle and critical explanation of it, madam, you will make me an acceptable present.”