She embraced him, kissed him, and assured him that she had never seen him more handsome.

The president addressed himself to me with much less haughtiness than usual. "O Kakidoran!" he exclaimed, "if this discovery of yours pleases the Council as well as it does me, your fortune is made. You may hope for the most honorable reward the State can give."

I gracefully thanked his Excellency, and immediately wrote a petition, which I requested him to lay before the Council.

His Excellency took the petition together with the wig, and departed. I understood that all the cases which were to come before the Council on this day, had been laid aside, so inquisitive were all to hear and examine my project. The work was accepted, and an appropriate reward was adjudged to me. I was called up to the council-chamber on my entrance, an old monkey stood up, and, after thanking me in the name of the whole republic, proclaimed that my work should be rewarded as its merits deserved. He then demanded, what length of time I should need to fabricate another such head ornament? I replied, that it was reward enough for me, that my curious workmanship had gained the approbation of the great men who composed the Council; for the rest, I bound myself to make another wig in two days, and also to manufacture wigs enough for the whole city in a month, provided I might count upon the assistance of a number of monkeys, accustomed to work. This proposal, however, made the president hot about the ears, and he exclaimed with much eagerness: "It is not fit, my dear Kakidoran, that this ornament should be common to the whole town, for being worn by all without distinction, it will become ordinary and vulgar. The nobility must necessarily be distinguished from the common people."

All the members of the Council concurred in his opinion, and the city marshal was charged to take heed that none might wear wigs, except the nobility. This order having been promulgated, the citizens thronged about the council-chamber to obtain titles and charters, which some bought with their money and others procured through the influence of their friends; so that in a short time full half the city were made nobles. But when petition after petition poured in from the provinces, that the like favor should be extended to them, the Council, being possessed with a righteous fear of riot and civil war, finally determined to allow every one, without distinction of rank, to wear a wig. I thus had the pleasure to see the whole Martinianic nation wigged before I left that country. And, truly, it can scarcely be imagined what a funny and ridiculous appearance the wigged monkeys presented! The whole nation made so much of my project and its accomplishment, that a new era was established; and from this time the wig-age commenced in the Martinianic annals.

In the meantime, I was loaded with praises and panegyrics, wrapped in a purple cloak, and returned from the court-house in the president's own sedan, the same porteur, who had formerly been my companion, serving me now as a horse. From that day I dined continually at the table of his Excellency.

With this glittering preamble to my fortunes, I commenced in earnest the work I had promised, and soon finished wigs enough for the whole Council; and after sweating for a month—a patent of nobility was brought to me, couched in the following words:

"In consideration of the most excellent and very useful discovery, through which Kakidoran, born in Europe, has made himself worthy of the gratitude of the whole Martinianic nation, we have resolved to advance him to the rank of nobility, so that he, and all his descendants shall be regarded as true noblemen, and enjoy all the prerogatives and rights, of which the nobility of Martinia are in possession. Furthermore, we have determined to dignify him with a new name; he shall therefore from this day, be no longer called Kakidoran, but Kikidorian. Moreover, since his new dignity requires a richer style of living, we grant him a yearly pension of two hundred patarer. Given in the council-chamber of Martinia, the fourth day of the month Merian, under the great seal of the Council."

Thus I suddenly became changed from a simple porteur to a respectable nobleman, and lived for a long while in great splendor and honor. When it was known that I was high in the favor of the president, everybody sought my good will and protection. It is the fashion among the poets of Martinia to panegyrize the tails of eminent monkeys, as it is with us to eulogize the beauty of women. Several poets commended the beauty of my tail, although I had none. To say everything on this subject in a few words—their fawning servility towards me was so extreme, that a certain man of high rank and station, did not hesitate, nor did he feel himself shamed, to promise me that his wife should make herself agreeable to me in every possible way, provided that I would recompense him by recommending him to the president.

When I had lived in this land for the space of two years, at first a porteur and latterly a nobleman, an incident, entirely unexpected, occurred, which was nearly fatal to me. I had, up to this period, been in special favor with his Excellency; and her Grace, the president's lady, had evinced so much kindness to me, that I was regarded the first among all her favorites. She was distinguished for her virtue; but, when in the lapse of time, I perceived one after another ambiguity in her expressions, I began to feel a kind of mistrust, especially when I observed that

Sometimes she'd smile with wanton grace,
 Then unto sudden tears give place,
 While gazing, silent, on my face
 With mild devotion.
 Her's all the art of tenderness,
 That pleases while it wounds no less:
Her breasts, half-covered, now confess
 Their strange emotion.
 Then sighs that can no reason find,
 Or used to make my reason blind:—
 Her hands upon her breast entwined—
 Ah, female charms!
 Her face would lose its rosy hue
 For lily's, washed in morning dew;
 Aurora's purple blazed anew,
 In love's alarms.

My suspicions finally became certainties, when a chambermaid brought to me, one day, the following note:

"Dearest Kikidorian,—

"The feeling which I owe to my rank and high descent, and the modesty natural to my sex, have until now hindered the sparks of love which have long secretly burned in my bosom, from breaking forth in open flame: but I am weary of the combat, and my heart can no longer resist its bewitching enemy. Have pity for a female, from whom only the utmost degree of burning love could have been able to extort a confession.

Ptarnnsa."

I cannot describe how singularly I felt at this entirely unexpected declaration of love: but as I held it far better to expose myself to the revenge of a furious female, than to sin against the order of nature, by a shameful intimacy with a creature that did not belong to my race, I immediately wrote an answer in the following words:

"Gracious Lady,—

"The constant favor his Excellency, your husband, has shown to me; the undeserved benefits he has bestowed upon me; the moral impossibility of fulfilling your gracious desires; and many other reasons, that I will not name, move me to submit to the anger of my gracious lady, rather than consent to an action that would stigmatize me as the most ungrateful and the lowest among all two-legged creatures. Besides, what is desired of me, would be more bitter to satisfy than death itself. This action, if I yielded to it, would effect the ruin and dishonor of one of the most respected families in the State, and my willingness would injure, before all others, that person who has desired it. With the most solemn and sincere assurances of gratitude I must here declare, gracious lady, that under no circumstances can I fulfil your wishes in this respect, although to all other commands I promise a blind obedience.

Kikidorian."

Underneath I wrote the following admonition:

"Think of this heavy sin;
 Fly ere it be too late:
 Shall vice, the pander, newly in,
 Bow virtue to the gate?
 Let Cupid not ensnare you—
 His cunning wiles beware you,
 The sweets of sin soon vanish—
 Its pains, ah! who can banish."

This letter I sent to the lady, and it had the effect that I expected; her love was changed to the bitterest hatred:—

In vain her glowing tongue would vie,
 To tell her frightful agony.
 Despairing shame her accents clip;—
 They freeze upon her snowy lip.
 No tears did flow; such pain oft dries
 The blessed current of the eyes:
 Fell vengeance from her black orbs glanced,
 While like a fury, she advanced.

Nevertheless, she restrained her fury, until she recovered the love-letter she had written to me. As soon as she had secured it, she hired some persons to testify by oath, that, in the absence of his Excellency, I had attempted to violate her. This fable was represented with so much art and speciousness, that the president did not doubt its truth, and I was ordered to be put in prison. In this, my despairing condition, I saw no other means of deliverance than to confess the crime, with which I had been charged, and supplicate the president for mercy: which being done, my life was conceded, but I was doomed to perpetual imprisonment.