“My heart’s joy, you say right,” replied Mangogul; “and your contrivance is the better still, because we shall certainly have none but those whom we have occasion for.” In a moment an order was dispatch’d to the Kislar-Agasi, and the master of the revels, to prepare the ball, and to distribute no more than four thousand tickets. They were probably better judges in that country than elsewhere, of the room that six thousand persons would take up.

To amuse themselves till the hour of the ball, Selim, Mangogul, and the favorite set about telling news. “Does madam know,” says Selim to the favorite, “that poor Codindo is dead?”

“This is the first word I heard of it, but what did he the of?” says the favorite.

“Alas, madam,” answered Selim, “he fell a victim to attraction. He filled his head with this system in his youth, and it turn’d his brain in his old days.”

“How so?” says the favorite.