stayed and dined with him; but that he would certainly call upon him on
the morrow.

Compared with his hotel the palace of his banker was a dungeon; even the
sunset voluptuousness of Fantaisie was now remembered without regret in
the blaze of artificial light and in the artificial gratification of
desires which art had alone created. After a magnificent repast, his
host politely inquired of Popanilla whether he would like to go to the
Opera, the comedy, or a concert; but the Fantaisian philosopher was not
yet quite corrupted; and, still inspired with a desire to acquire useful
knowledge, he begged his landlord to procure him immediately a pamphlet
on the Shell Question.

While his host was engaged in procuring this luxury a man entered the
room and told Popanilla that he had walked that day two thousand five
hundred paces, and that the tax due to the Excise upon this promenade
was fifty crowns. The Captain stared, and remarked to the
excise-officer that he thought a man's paces were a strange article to
tax. The excise-officer, with great civility, answered that no doubt at
first sight it might appear rather strange, but that it was the only
article left untaxed in Vraibleusia; that there was a slight deficiency
in the last quarter's revenue, and that therefore the Government had no
alternative; that it was a tax which did not press heavily upon the
individual, because the Vraibleusians were of a sedentary habit; that,
besides, it was an opinion every day more received among the best judges
that the more a man was taxed the richer he ultimately would prove; and
he concluded by saying that Popanilla need not make himself uneasy about
these demands, because, if he were ruined to-morrow, being a foreigner,
he was entitled by the law of the land to five thousand a-year; whereas
he, the excise-man, being a native-born Vraibleusian, had no claims