hearing your bravos?"

"Much, my good lord; at least such famous mortals, so enamored of a
clamorous notoriety, as to bravo for themselves, when none else will
huzza; whose whole existence is an unintermitting consciousness of
self; whose very persons stand erect and self-sufficient as their
infallible index, the capital letter I; who relish and comprehend no
reputation but what attaches to the carcass; who would as lief be
renowned for a splendid mustache, as for a splendid drama: who know
not how it was that a personage, to posterity so universally
celebrated as the poet Vavona, ever passed through the crowd
unobserved; who deride the very thunder for making such a noise in
Mardi, and yet disdain to manifest itself to the eye."

"Wax not so warm, Babbalanja; but tell us, if to his contemporaries
Vavona's person was almost unknown, what satisfaction did he derive
from his genius?"

"Had he not its consciousness?--an empire boundless as the West. What
to him were huzzas? Why, my lord, from his privacy, the great and good
Logodora sent liniment to the hoarse throats without. But what said
Bardianna, when they dunned him for autographs?--'Who keeps the
register of great men? who decides upon noble actions? and how long
may ink last? Alas! Fame has dropped more rolls than she displays; and
there are more lost chronicles, than the perished books of the
historian Livella.' But what is lost forever, my lord, is nothing to
what is now unseen. There are more treasures in the bowels of the
earth, than on its surface."

"Ah! no gold," cried Yoomy, "but that comes from dark mines."