enjoyed, yet who, it appeared to him, could have set out the entire
matter in a much more satisfactory way from the beginning, he was made
aware by the unexpected beating of many gongs, and by other signs of
refined and deferential welcome, that a person of exalted rank was
approaching his residence. While he was still hesitating in his
uncertainty regarding the most courteous and delicate form of
self-abasement with which to honour so important a visitor--whether to
rush forth and allow the chair-carriers to pass over his prostrate
form, to make a pretence of being a low-caste slave, and in that guise
doing menial service, or to conceal himself beneath a massive and
overhanging table until his guest should have availed himself of the
opportunity to examine at his leisure whatever the room contained--the
person in question stood before him. In every detail of dress and
appointment he had the undoubted appearance of being one to whom no
door might be safely closed.

"'Alas!' exclaimed Quen, 'how inferior and ill-contrived is the mind
of a person of my feeble intellectual attainments. Even at this
moment, when the near approach of one who obviously commands every
engaging accomplishment might reasonably be expected to call up within
it an adequate amount of commonplace resource, its ill-destined
possessor finds himself entirely incapable of conducting himself with
the fitting outward marks of his great internal respect. This
residence is certainly unprepossessing in the extreme, yet it contains
many objects of some value and of great rarity; illiterate as this
person is, he would not be so presumptuous as to offer any for your
acceptance, but if you will confer upon him the favour of selecting
that which appears to be the most priceless and unreplaceable, he will
immediately, and with every manifestation of extreme delight, break it
irredeemably in your honour, to prove the unaffected depth of his