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
anything in the distance. Popanilla, who, like all savages, was
long-sighted, applying to his eye the glass which, in conformity to the
custom of the country, he always wore round his neck, confessed that he
saw nothing. The Secretary, who had never unfixed his glass nor moved a
step since he asked the question, at length, by pointing with his
finger, attracted Popanilla's attention to what his Excellency conceived
to be a porpoise bobbing up and down in the waves.
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