"Get along with you, perversus nebulo!" exclaimed his highness, smiling. "You want us to commit ourselves, do you? I'll warrant you suspect what would have been our decision! I don't in the least doubt but even the mayor here, would elect to kiss a beautiful woman rather than the pope's slipper—especially if the choice were submitted to him in the province of Sardhana! It is enough: you became an idol worshipper—forced to it by circumstances. It is your own affair, and one which you will have to settle with a higher tribunal than this one. This indictment may be erased from the record."
Not even the mayor objected to this decision. At first, though, he wrinkled his brows and looked serious; but in the end he smiled with the rest; and dictated to the notary, that the transgression last confessed might be recorded as condoned by the court.
Most worthy and honorable gentlemen, resumed the prisoner, I must now tell you something about the customs and manners of that land whither I had been led by the hand of destiny. Even the sky over there is unlike ours. Why, the sun of Holland would not do for a moon in India! Yon flaming heavens heat the blood and brain to boiling; the humid atmosphere creates phenomena which are like the phantasmagoria of delirium; triple suns, and wreaths of flame appear in the sky; when frequently the mysterious Fata Morgana portrays inverted landscapes, and cities; the vivid coloring of the clouds causes the most brilliant hues on the earth below to appear faded and insignificant.
Forests, fields, houses, human beings, at times take on an ocherous hue, as if the world were dead; and when a rain falls, it is a deluge of fire from a sky of brass. And sometimes, the cloud-burst will be like a rain of blood, and the whole earth will glow with the most brilliant crimson hue.
On very, very hot days, when the native farmers trudge along the high-road (the high caste native never travels on foot, nor appears in public at midday) the dust rising from their feet looks like a fiery mist, and makes one think he is looking on the damned in hades walking amid the flames!
And there too the soil is so different from ours. There the plants we grow in pots in our hot houses thrive and luxuriate under the open sky, and form a wilderness, the lurking place of tigers and lions, in which the fragrance of the very air is intoxicating as wine.
The hundred different varieties of fruits, which ripen in succession throughout the year, explain sufficiently how a people that outnumbers the entire population of Europe are able to subsist on vegetable diet alone, without the nourishment of meats, which their religion prohibits.
The borasses palm supplies them with honey, oil, wine, and sugar; another palm yields flour, butter, and milk; and they have a tree on which grow loaves of bread the size of a human head; raw, this vegetable bread is a sweet fruit; baked, it is as palatable as a bakers' loaf and—
"Stop! stop!" cried the chair, rapping on the table with his stick. "That is going too far! Of all the lies you have told us, this one about loaves of bread growing on a tree is the most outrageously incredible."
"I am very sorry that your honor refuses to believe there is such a tree. The proof that I am not lying may easily be obtained, if your honor will send a deputation to India, to make inquiries concerning the truth of my statements, if it turns out that a single one of them is lacking in truth, then your honor may disbelieve all the rest."