“While the fate of those heads moved my compassion, at a distance I saw other more charitable pygmies, who were crawling on the ground with spectacles on. They were picking up noses and ears, and fitting them to some old heads, from which time had disengaged them. There were some of them, but those were few in number, who succeeded: the rest fixed the nose where the ear should be, and the ear where the nose: and this rendered the heads more disfigured than before.

“Being very desirous to know what all those things meant, I ask’d my guide: and she had just open’d her lips, in order to give me an answer, when I awoke in a fright.”

“That was cruel,” says Mangogul: “this female would have revealed a number of mysteries to you. But in her stead, I am of opinion that we ought to address ourselves to my juggler Bloculocus.”

“Who?” replied the favorite. “That silly fellow, to whom you have granted the sole privilege of showing the magic lantern in your court.”