the minority.

Popanilla appeared once more in the world.

'Dear me! is that you, Pop?' exclaimed the ladies. 'What have you been
doing with yourself all this time? Travelling, I suppose. Every one
travels now. Really you travelled men get quite bores. And where did
you get that coat, if it be a coat?'

Such was the style in which the Fantaisian females saluted the long
absent Popanilla; and really, when a man shuts himself up from the world
for a considerable time, and fancies that in condescending to re-enter
it he has surely the right to expect the homage due to a superior being,
these salutations are awkward. The ladies of England peculiarly excel
in this species of annihilation; and while they continue to drown
puppies, as they daily do, in a sea of sarcasm, I think no true
Englishman will hesitate one moment in giving them the preference for
tact and manner over all the vivacious French, all the self-possessing
Italian, and all the tolerant German women. This is a claptrap, and I
have no doubt will sell the book.

Popanilla, however, had not re-entered society with the intention of
subsiding into a nonentity; and he therefore took the opportunity, a few
minutes after sunset, just as his companions were falling into the
dance, to beg the favour of being allowed to address his sovereign only
for one single moment.

'Sire!' said he, in that mild tone of subdued superciliousness with
which we should always address kings, and which, while it vindicates our
dignity, satisfactorily proves that we are above the vulgar passion of