As he was speaking, two gentlemen in blue, with red waistcoats, entered
the chamber and seized Popanilla by the collar. The Vraibleusian
Government, which is so famous for its interpretation of National Law,
had arrested the Ambassador for high treason.
CHAPTER 17
A prison conveyed the most lugubrious ideas to the mind of the unhappy
Plenipotentiary; and shut up in a hackney-coach, with a man on each side
of him with a most gloomy conceptions of overwhelming fetters, black
bread, and green water. He arrived at the principal gaol in Hubbabub.
He was ushered into an elegantly furnished apartment, with French sash
windows and a piano. Its lofty walls were entirely hung with a fanciful
paper, which represented a Tuscan vineyard; the ceiling was covered with
sky and clouds; roses were in abundance; and the windows, though well
secured, excited no jarring associations in the mind of the individual
they illumined, protected, as they were, by polished bars of cut steel.
This retreat had been fitted up by a poetical politician, who had
recently been confined for declaring that the Statue was an old idol
originally imported from the Sandwich Isles.
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