Here the manuscript was worm-eaten.
All this while the Orchestra went on, and the loud laughs of the pit and boxes joined to the sound of the instruments, and the singing of the Toys, completed the cacophony.
Some of the actresses, fearing lest their Toys, tired with quavering impertinences, might resolve to speak them out, ran behind the scenes: but they escaped with the fright only. Mangogul being persuaded that the public would learn nothing new, turn’d off his ring. In an instant all the Toys were silent, the bursts of laughter ceased, the audience grew calm, the play was resumed and finished peaceably. The curtain drop’d, the Sultana and Sultan went off, and the Toys of our actresses went to their several appointments, where they were to have a different employment from singing.
This affair made a great noise. The men laugh’d, the women were alarmed, the Bonzas were scandalized, the academicians rack’d their brains about it. But what did Orcotomus say? Orcotomus triumph’d. He had hinted in one of his memoirs, that the Toys would infallibly sing: they had sung accordingly, and this phenomenon, which disconcerted his brethren, was to him a new ray of light, and completed the confirmation of his system.
XIV
Orcotomus’s Experiments
It was on the fifteenth of the moon of ⸻, that Orcotomus had read his memoir to the academy, and communicated his thoughts on the tattle of the Toys. As he then did with the greatest assurance promise to produce infallible experiments, which he had repeated several times, and always with success; the majority of people was struck with his doctrine. For some time the public preserved the favorable impressions they had received: and for full six weeks Orcotomus pass’d for having made considerable discoveries.
Nothing was wanting to complete his triumph, but performing before the academy the famous experiments, which he had preached so loudly. The assembly that met on this occasion was extremely brilliant. The ministers of state graced the meeting: the Sultan himself did not disdain to be there, but invisible.
As Mangogul was a great Monologue maker, and the futility of the conversations of his time had tainted him with the habitude of soliloquy: “Either Orcotomus,” said he, “must be an arrant quack, or the Genius my protector, a great fool. If the academician, who certainly is not a conjurer, can restore speech to dead Toys; the Genius who protects me was in the wrong to make a compact, and sell his soul to the devil, for the sake of communicating it to Toys full of life.”
Mangogul was puzzling himself with such reflections, when he found himself in the middle of his academy. Orcotomus had for spectators, as appears, all those in Banza, who were knowing in the subject of Toys. In order to be satisfied with his audience, all he wanted was to give them satisfaction: but the issue of his experiments proved very unhappy. Orcotomus took up a Toy, put his mouth to it, blew into it till he was out of breath, quieted it, returned, tried another: for he had brought a variety of them with him, of all ages, sizes, conditions and colours: but in vain did he blow; nothing was heard but inarticulate sounds, vastly different from what he had promised.
Then ran a buzzing murmur through the company, which disconcerted him for a moment: but he recovered himself, and alleged that such experiments were not easy to be made before so great a number of people: and he was right.
Mangogul got up in wrath, went away, and in the twinkling of an eye was in the favorite Sultana’s apartment. “Well, prince,” said she upon seeing him, “who has won the day, you or Orcotomus? For his Toys have performed wonders to be sure.” The Sultan took some turns about the room without a word of answer. “But,” resumed the favorite, “your highness seems dissatisfied.”
“Oh! madam, the impudence of that Orcotomus is not to be match’d. Pray, do not so much as mention him from this moment—What will you say, O future generations, when you shall be informed, that the great Mangogul allowed a hundred thousand crowns in yearly pensions to such fellows; while gallant officers, who with their blood had watered the laurels that surround his brow, were reduced to twenty pound a year?—By Jove, the thought distracts me: I shall be out of humor this month to come.”
Here Mangogul broke off, and continued to walk about the room. He hung down his head, marched to and fro, stop’d, and now and then stamp’d the floor with his foot. He sat down a moment, rose up in a hurry, took his leave of Mirzoza, forgot to kiss her, and retir’d to his own apartment.
The African author, who has immortalized himself by the history of the high and marvellous exploits of Erguebzed and Mangogul, continues in these words:
By Mangogul’s ill humor it was thought, that he was on the point of banishing all the learned out of his dominions. Far from it, the next day he arose in a gay mood, performed his exercises at the riding-house in the morning, in the evening supp’d with Mirzoza and some favorites, under a magnificent tent in the gardens of the Seraglio, and never appeared more disengaged from affairs of state.
The dissatisfied and the disaffected of Congo, and the newsmongers of Banza, did not fail to spread their reports of this conduct. For what do not people of this stamp find fault with? “Is this,” said they in the public walks and coffeehouses, “is this governing a state? To spend the day in tilting, and
