Now there are but two conditions that
entitle one to that rank; one must be a shepherdess or a princess. Well,
content yourself, said the giant, you will die an empress, without
being either the one or the other! But what sublime reason had you for
lengthening your name so unaccountably? It is a custom in my family,
said she: all my ancestors were learned men, who wrote about the Romans.
It sounded more classic, and gave a higher opinion of their literature,
to put a Latin termination to their names. All this is Japonese to me,
said the emperor; but your ancestors seem to have been a parcel of
mountebanks. Does one understand any thing the better for corrupting
one's name? Oh, said the princess, but it shewed taste too. There was
a time when in Italy the learned carried this still farther; and a man
with a large forehead, who was born on the fifth of January, called
himself Quintus Januarius Fronto. More and more absurd, said the
emperor. You seem to have a great deal of impertinent knowledge about a
great many impertinent people; but proceed in your story: whence came
you? Mynheer, said she, I was born in Holland--The deuce you was, said
the emperor, and where is that? It was no where, replied the princess,
spritelily, till my countrymen gained it from the sea--Indeed, moppet!
said his majesty; and pray who were your countrymen, before you had any
country? Your majesty asks a vey shrewd question, said she, which I
cannot resolve on a sudden; but I will step home to my library, and
consult five or six thousand volumes of modern history, an hundred or
two dictionaries, and an abridgment of geography in forty volumes in
folio, and be back in an instant.
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