world, compared with whom all
other crowned heads ranked merely as subjects did with their immediate
sovereigns. This Prince, they said, lived in the most delicious region
in the world, and the fruit which they imported could only be procured
from his private gardens, where it sprang from one of the trees that
had bloomed in the gardens of the Hesperides. The Vraibleusians were at
first a little surprised at this information, but the old tradition of
the market-gardener was certainly an improbable one; and the excellence
of the fruit and the importance assumed by those who supplied it were
deemed exceedingly good evidence of the truth of the present story. When
the dealers had repeated their new tale for a certain number of years,
there was not an individual in the island who in the slightest degree
suspected its veracity. One more century, and no person had ever heard
that any suspicions had ever existed.

The immediate agents of the Prince of the World could, of course, be no
common personages; and the servants of the gardener, who some centuries
before had meekly disclaimed the proffered reverence of his delighted
customers, now insisted upon constant adoration from every eater of
pine-apples in the island. In spite, however, of the arrogance of the
dealers, of their refusal to be responsible to the laws of the country
in which they lived, and of the universal precedence which, on all
occasions, was claimed even by the shop-boys, so decided was the taste
which the Vraibleusians had acquired for pine-apples that there
is little doubt that, had the dealers in this delicious fruit been
contented with the respect and influence and profit which were the
consequences of their vocation, the Vraibleusians would never have
presumed to have grumbled at their arrogance or to have questioned their
privileges. But the agents, wearied of the limited sphere to which their
exertions were confined, and encouraged by the success which every new
claim and pretence on their part invariably experienced, began to evince
an inclination to interfere in other affairs besides those of fruit, and
even expressed their willingness to undertake no less an office than the
management of the Statue.

A century or two were solely occupied by conflicts occasioned by the
unreasonable ambition of these dealers in pine-apples. Such great
political effects could be produced by men apparently so unconnected
with politics as market-gardeners! Ever support