"Yes: in clear weather about the reefs, I have beheld them time and
again: but never with an eye to their political condition."

"Ah! my lord king, we should not cut off the nervous communication
between our eyes, and our cerebellums."

"What were you about to say concerning the Tunicata order of mollusca,
sir philosopher?"

"My very honorable lord, I hurry to conclude. They live in a compound
structure; but though connected by membranous canals, freely
communicating throughout the league--each member has a heart and
stomach of its own; provides and digests its own dinners; and grins
and bears its own gripes, without imparting the same to its neighbors.
But if a prowling shark touches one member, it ruffles all. Precisely
thus now with Vivenza. In that confederacy, there are as many
consciences as tribes; hence, if one member on its own behalf, assumes
aught afterwards repudiated, the sin rests on itself alone; is not
participated."

"A very subtle explanation, Babbalanja. You must allude, then, to
those recreant tribes; which, while in their own eyes presenting a
sublime moral spectacle to Mardi,--in King Bello's, do but present a
hopeless example of bad debts. And these, the tribes that boast of
boundless wealth."

"Most true, my lord. But Bello errs, when for this thing, he
stigmatizes all Vivenza, as a unity."