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.