Everything being concluded, and having received my instructions for the
voyage, I was conducted by the illustrious Hilaro Frosticos, the Lady
Fragrantia, and a prodigious crowd of nobility, and placed sitting upon
the summit of the whale's bones at the palace; and having remained in
this situation for three days and three nights, as a trial ordeal, and
a specimen of my perseverance and resolution, the third hour after
midnight they seated me in the chariot of Queen Mab. It was a prodigious
dimension, large enough to contain more stowage than the tun of
Heidelberg, and globular like a hazel-nut: in fact, it seemed to be
really a hazel-nut grown to a most extravagant dimension, and that a
great worm of proportionable enormity had bored a hole in the shell.
Through this same entrance I was ushered. It was as large as a
coach-door, and I took my seat in the centre, a kind of chair
self-balanced without touching anything, like the fancied tomb of
Mahomet. The whole interior surface of the nutshell appeared a luminous
representation of all the stars of heaven, the fixed stars, the
planets, and a comet. The stars were as large as those worn by our first
nobility, and the comet, excessively brilliant, seemed as if you had
assembled all the eyes of the beautiful girls in the kingdom, and
combined them, like a peacock's plumage, into the form of a comet--that
is, a globe, and a bearded tail to it, diminishing gradually to a point.
This beautiful constellation seemed very sportive and delightful. It
was much in the form of a tadpole! and, without ceasing, went, full
of playful giddiness, up and down, all over the heaven on the concave
surface of the nutshell. One time it would be at that part of the
heavens under my feet, and in the next minute would be over my head. It
was never at rest, but for ever going east, west, north, or south, and
paid no more respect to the different worlds than if they were so many
lanterns without reflectors. Some of them he would dash against and push
out of their places; others he would burn up and consume to ashes: and