On coming to the entrance, the mayor loosed his shoes, that he might not soil the marble floor. After waiting for a long time, with not a little impatience, we were suffered to enter the reception hall. Here the president sat in a golden chair.
As soon as he saw us, the president burst out in a terrific laugh. I concluded either that he was seized by delirium, or that silly and insane laughter was a peculiarity of great people in Martinia. In short, I took his lordship to be a fool.
I afterwards expressed this opinion to the mayor; but he assured me that the president was a monkey of remarkable natural powers; that his mind was so comprehensive, that he not only determined matters of the highest importance at table, with his glass in hand, but even wrote or dictated a new statute between the courses.
His excellency tattled to me half an hour, his tongue wagging, the while, with an agility immeasurably superior to that of our European barbers.
Then turning to my companion, he said, he would take me among his subordinate attendants, since he perceived, from my sluggish disposition, that I must have been born in the land of stupidity, where
Long-eared mortals, in perpetual fogs,
Oft lose their way to mire in horrid bogs:—
and consequently that I was unfit for any office of trust and respectability. "I have, indeed," urged the mayor, "observed a natural obtuseness in this man; nevertheless, when he is allowed time to think, he judges by no means badly."
"Of what use is that," replied the president; "here we need nimble officers, for the immense diversity of our affairs does not give us time to think."
The president, having spoken thus, very gravely, and carefully examined my body, and directed me to lift a heavy weight from the floor. Seeing that I did this with ease, he remarked: "Nature, although she has stinted you in the faculties of the soul, has compensated, in some measure, by granting to you a degree of bodily strength."
I now received orders to go out and wait in the court. Soon after the mayor followed, and as he passed, told me that his excellency had determined to include me in his train.