ueen had given the symbolic
word used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said
to her tabachins, A panacea; just as Lucullus used to say, In Apollo, when
he designed to give his friends a singular treat; though sometimes they
took him at unawares, as, among the rest, Cicero and Hortensius sometimes
used to do.

Chapter 5.XXI.

How the Queen passed her time after dinner.

When we had dined, a chachanin led us into the queen's hall, and there we
saw how, after dinner, with the ladies and the princes of her court, she
used to sift, searce, bolt, range, and pass away time with a fine large
white and blue silk sieve. We also perceived how they revived ancient
sports, diverting themselves together at--

1. Cordax. 6. Phrygia. 11. Monogas.
2. Emmelia. 7. Thracia. 12. Terminalia.
3. Sicinnia. 8. Calabrisme. 13. Floralia.
4. Jambics. 9. Molossia. 14. Pyrrhice.
5. Persica. 10. Cernophorum. 15. (Nicatism.)
And a thousand other dances.

(Motteux has the following footnote:--'1. A sort of country-dance. 2. A
still tragic dance. 3. Dancing and singing used at funerals. 4. Cutting
sarcasms and lampoons. 5. The Persian dance. 6. Tunes, whose measure
inspired men with a kind of divine fury. 7. The Thracian movement. 8.
Smutty verses. 9. A measure to which the Molossi of Epirus danced a
certain morrice. 10. A dance with bowls or pots in their hands. 11. A
song where one sings alone. 12. Sports at the holidays of the god of
bounds. 13. Dancing naked at Flora's holidays. 14. The Trojan dance in
armour.')

Afterwards she gave orders that they should show us the apartments and
curiosities in her palace. Accordingly we saw there such new, strange, and
wonderful things, that I am still ravished in admiration every time I think
of't. However, nothing surprised us more than what was done by the
gentlemen of her household, abstractors, parazons, nebidins, spodizators,
and others, who freely and without the least dissembling told us that the
queen their mistress did all impossible things, and cured men of incurable
diseases; and they, her officers, used to do the rest.

I saw there a young parazon cure many of the new consumption, I mean the
pox, though they were never so peppered. Had it been the rankest Roan ague
(Anglice, the Covent-garden gout), 'twas all one to him; touching only
their dentiform vertebrae thrice with