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The Voyage of Captain Popanilla by Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli
page 80 of 116 (68%)
of their plots, and so admirably inventive the conception of their
characters, that many who had been repulsed by the somewhat abstract
matter and arid style of the treatises, seduced by the interest of a
story, and by the dazzling delicacies of a charming style, really now
picked up a considerable quantity of very useful knowledge; so that when
the delighted students had eaten some fifty or sixty imaginary dinners
in my lord's dining-room, and whirled some fifty or sixty imaginary
waltzes in my lady's dancing-room, there was scarcely a brute left among
the whole Millionaires. But what produced the most beneficial effects
on the new people, and excited the greatest indignation and despair
among the old class, were some volumes which the Government, with
shocking Machiavelism, bribed some needy scions of nobility to scribble,
and which revealed certain secrets vainly believed to be quite sacred
and inviolable.



CHAPTER 13


Shortly after the sailing of the great fleet the Private Secretary
engaged in a speculation which was rather more successful than any one
contained in his pamphlet on 'The Present State of the Western
Republics.'

One morning, as he and Popanilla were walking on a quay, and
deliberating on the clauses of the projected commercial treaty between
Vraibleusia and Fantaisie, the Secretary suddenly stopped, as if he had
seen his father's ghost or lost the thread of his argument, and asked
Popanilla, with an air of suppressed agitation, whether he observed
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