this time for another person. He could not
contain himself. He burst into an exclamation. He told the judge, in a
voice of mingled delight, humility, and triumph, that it was possible
he might be guilty of high treason, because he was ignorant of what
the crime consisted; but as for stealing two hundred and nineteen
Camelopards, he declared that such a larceny was a moral impossibility,
because he had never seen one such animal in the whole course of his
life.

The judge was kind and considerate. He told the prisoner that the charge
of stealing Camelopards was a fiction of law; that he had no doubt
he had never seen one in the whole course of his life, nor in all
probability had any one in the whole Court. He explained to Popanilla,
that originally this animal greatly abounded in Vraibleusia; that the
present Court, the highest and most ancient in the kingdom, had then
been instituted for the punishment of all those who molested or injured
that splendid animal. The species, his lordship continued, had been long
extinct; but the Vraibleusians, duly reverencing the institutions of
their ancestors, had never presumed to abrogate the authority of the
Camelopard Court, or invest any other with equal privileges. Therefore,
his lordship added, in order to try you in this Court for a modern
offence of high treason, you must first be introduced by fiction of law
as a stealer of Camelopards, and then being in praesenti regio, in
a manner, we proceed to business by a special power for the absolute
offence. Popanilla was so confounded by the kindness of the judge and
the clearness of his lordship's statement that he quite lost the thread
of his peroration.

The trial proceeded. Everybody with whom Popanilla had conversed during
his visit to Vraibleusia was subpoenaed against him, and the evidence
was conclusive. Skindeep, who was brought up by a warrant from the
King's Bench, proved the fact of Popanilla's landing; and that he
had given himself out as a political exile, the victim of a tyrant, a
corrupt aristocracy, and a misguided people. But, either from a secret
feeling towards his former friend or from his aversion to answer
questions, this evidence was on the whole not very satisfactory.

The bookseller proved the publication of that fatal volume whose
deceptive and glowing statements were alone sufficient to ensure
Popanilla's fate. It was in vain that the author avowed that he had
never written a line of his own book. Thi