what you tell me, yet I hope you will pardon me if I do not accept your proposal, for, in short, our figures, tastes, and manners are not quite suitable." "I agree with you," she said, "and our hearts also are unlike; you are an ingrate; for a long time I have suspected it, and I am very foolish to feel an affection for a prince who so little deserves it."
"But, Babiole, think of the misery with which I should see you, perched on the top of a sycamore, holding on to a branch by your tail. Take my advice! laugh at this affair, for your honour and mine. Marry King Magot, and for old friendship's sake, send me your first little monkey." "It is well for you, my Lord," added Babiole, "that I have not exactly the disposition of an ape; any other than I would have already scratched out your eyes, bitten off your nose, and torn off your ears, but I abandon you to the reflections that you will one day make on your unworthy conduct." She could say no more, for her governess came to fetch her; the Ambassador Mirlifiche, having taken to her apartments some magnificent presents. There was a toilette, composed of a spider's web embroidered with little glowworms; an egg-shell held the combs, and a white-heart cherry served for a pin-cushion, all the linen being trimmed with lace paper. There were besides in a basket several shells neatly arranged; some to serve for earrings, others for bodkins, and all brilliant as diamonds; and what was much better, there were a dozen boxes filled with comfits, and a little glass coffer, containing a nut and an olive, but the key was lost. Babiole, however, cared little about it. The Ambassador informed her in a grumbling tone, the language used in Magotia, that his King was more touched by her charms than by those of any monkey he had ever seen in his life; that he had had a palace built for her in the top of a fir-tree; that he had sent her these presents and also some excellent sweetmeats, as a mark of his attachment, so that the King, his master, could not better testify his affection. "But," continued he, "the strongest proof of his tenderness, and the one of which you ought to be the most sensible, is, Madam, the care he has taken to have his portrait painted as a foretaste of the pleasure you will have in seeing him." He thereupon displayed the portrait of the King of the Monkeys, seated on a great log of wood, and eating an apple.
Babiole turned her eyes away, that they might not be
