The couple was now betrothed.
It was not in the power of man to publish bans of greater strength.
If the man gave one pinch, the marriage was solemnized the following day; if two, the second day after, and so on.
But I was not a Roundbody!
How could I possibly comply with the ancient custom of the land?
Ah! Woman! Woman! it matters not whether thou belongest to the Roundbodies or to the Longbodies, in affairs of the heart thy ingenuity and subtlety overmatch the philosophy of man!
When it was made known to the princess Rōlâ-Bōlâ that the royal counselors had, after mature deliberation, reached the conclusion that the laws of the land—made sacred by the observance of ages—forbade any such union contemplated by her, she flew into a towering or, rather, I should call it, a bounding passion, for, from one end of her spacious salon to the other, sidewise and lengthwise, she bounded about like a great ball bouncing under the play of an invisible bat.
Alternately she wept, laughed, scolded and threatened.
But it made little difference how she began her tirades, they all had the same ending:
“I say, I shall marry Tôô-tôô-lō!”