The Private Secretary told Popanilla, with an air
of great complacency, that the Vraibleusian theatres were the largest in
the world. Popanilla had little doubt of the truth of this information,
as a long time elapsed before he could even discover the stage. He
observed that every person in the theatre carried a long black glass,
which he kept perpetually fixed to his eye. To sit in a huge room
hotter than a glass-house, in a posture emulating the most sanctified
Faquir, with a throbbing head-ache, a breaking back, and twisted legs,
with a heavy tube held over one eye, and the other covered with the
unemployed hand, is in Vraibleusia called a public amusement.
The play was by the most famous dramatist that Vraibleusia ever
produced; and certainly, when his Excellency witnessed the first scenes,
it was easier to imagine that he was once more in his own sunset Isle of
Fantaisie than in the railroad state of Vraibleusia: but, unfortunately,
this evening the principal characters and scenes were omitted, to make
room for a moving panorama, which lasted some hours, of the chief and
most recent Vraibleusian victories.
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