evenge for a sharp fire, "burns
two villages, slays 2 or 300 head of women, and bags children without
number;" and in the evening Popanilla's powers of digestion are
improved. He now returns to Vraibleusia, where all are _panic_-struck,
and his friend, the banker, unlike his "perpetual ticket," has stopped
payment, and all our traveller's resources. Popanilla consoles him with
the joke that "things were not quite so bad as they appeared," till they
get worse, by two gentlemen in blue, with red waistcoats, arresting the
ambassador for high treason. This completes his "amusements." He fears
"confined cells, overwhelming fetters, black bread, and green water, in
the principal gaol in Hubbabub;" but becomes ensconced in Leigh Hunt's
"elegantly furnished apartment, with French sash-windows and a piano.
Its lofty walls were entirely hung with a fanciful paper, representing a
Tuscan vineyard; the ceiling was covered with sky and clouds; roses were
in abundance; and the windows, though well secured, excited no jarring
associations in the mind of the individual they illumined, protected as
they were by polished bars of cut-steel."

"Next to being a plenipotentiary, Popanilla preferred being a prisoner.
His daily meals consisted of every delicacy in season; a marble bath was
ever at his service; a billiard-room and dumb-bells always ready; and
his old friends, the most eminent physician, and the most celebrated
practitioner in Hubbabub, called upon him daily to feel his pulse and
look at his tongue. These attentions authorized a hope that he might yet
again be an ambassador; that his native land might still be discovered,
and its resources still be developed; but when his gaoler told him that
the rest of the prisoners were treated in a manner equally indulgent,
because the Vraibleusians are the most humane people in the world,
Popanilla's spirits became somewhat depressed."

"He was greatly consoled, however, by a daily visit from a body of the
most beautiful, the most accomplished, and the most virtuous females
in Hubbabub, who tasted his food to see that his cook did his duty,
recommended him a plentiful use of pine-apple well peppered, and made
him a present of a very handsome shirt, with worked frills and ruffles,
to be hanged in. This enchanting committee generally confined their
attentions to murderers, and other victims of the passions, who
were deserted in their hour of need by the rest of the society they
had outraged;