One of the goats presented gave me an opportunity of hearing one of the strangest stories I had yet heard in this strange country: it was a fine for attempted regicide, which happened yesterday, when a boy, finding the king alone, which is very unusual, walked up to him and threatened to kill him, because, he said, he took the lives of men unjustly.

The king explained by description and pantomime how the affair passed.

When the youth attacked him he had in his hand the revolving pistol I had given him, and showed us, holding the pistol to his cheek, how he had presented the muzzle to the boy, which, though it was unloaded, so frightened him that he ran away.

All the courtiers n'yanzigged vigorously for the condescension of the king in telling the story.

There must have been some special reason why, in a court where trifling breaches of etiquette were punished with a cruel death, so grave a crime should have been so leniently dealt with; but I could not get at the bottom of the affair.