was discovered that his chief loss had been incurred by supporting that
competition establishment where purses were bought full of crowns.

In spite of his own misfortunes, Popanilla hastened to console his
friend. He explained to him that things were not quite so bad as they
appeared; that society consisted of two classes, those who laboured,
and those who paid the labourers; that each class was equally useful,
because, if there were none to pay, the labourers would not be
remunerated, and if there were none to labour, the payers would not be
accommodated; that Skindeep might still rank in one of these classes;
that he might therefore still be a useful member of society; that, if
he were useful, he must therefore be good; and that, if he were good,
he must therefore be happy; because happiness is the consequence of
assisting the beneficial development of the ameliorating principles of
the social action.

As he was speaking, two gentlemen in blue, with red waistcoats, entered
the chamber and seized Popanilla by the collar. The Vraibleusian
Government, which is so famous for its interpretation of National Law,
had arrested the Ambassador for high treason.

CHAPTER 17

A prison conveyed the most lugubrious ideas to the mind of the unhappy
Plenipotentiary; and shut up in a hackney-coach, with a man on each side
of him with a most gloomy conceptions of overwhelming fetters, black
bread, and green water. He arrived at the principal gaol in Hubbabub.
He was ushered into an elegantly furnished apartment, with French sash
windows and a piano. Its lofty walls were entirely hung with a fanciful
paper, which represented 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.
This retreat had been fitted up by a poetical politician, who had
recently been confined for declaring that the Statue was an old idol
originally imported from the Sandwich Isles. Taking up a brilliantly
bound volume which reposed upon a rosewood table, Popanilla recited
aloud a sonnet to Liberty; but the account given of the goddess by
the bard was so confused, and he seemed so little acquainted with his
subject, that the reader began to suspect it was an effusion of the
gaoler.

Next to being a Plenipotentiary, Popanilla preferred being a prisone