As for the possible hereafter of the whales; a creature eighty feet long without stockings, and thirty feet round the waist before dinner, is not inconsiderately to be consigned to annihilation.

CHAPTER XCV That Jolly Old Lord Borabolla Laughs On Both Sides Of His Face

“A very good palace, this, coz, for you and me,” said waddling old Borabolla to Media, as, returned from our excursion, he slowly lowered himself down to his mat, sighing like a grampus.

By this, he again made known the vastness of his hospitality, which led him for the nonce to parcel out his kingdom with his guests.

But apart from these extravagant expressions of good feeling, Borabolla was the prince of good fellows.  His great tun of a person was indispensable to the housing of his bullock-heart; under which, any lean wight would have sunk.  But alas! unlike Media and Taji, Borabolla, though a crowned king, was accounted no demi-god; his obesity excluding him from that honor.  Indeed, in some quarters of Mardi, certain pagans maintain, that no fat man can be even immortal.  A dogma! truly, which should be thrown to the dogs.  For fat men are the salt and savor of the earth; full of good humor, high spirits, fun, and all manner of jollity.  Their breath clears the atmosphere:  their exhalations air the world.  Of men, they are the good measures; brimmed, heaped, pressed down, piled up, and running over.  They are as ships from Teneriffe; swimming deep, full of old wine, and twenty steps down into their holds.  Soft and susceptible, all round they are easy of entreaty.  Wherefore, for all their rotundity, they are too often circumnavigated by hatchet-faced knaves.  Ah! a fat uncle, with a fat paunch, and a fat purse, is a joy and a delight to all nephews; to philosophers, a subject of endless speculation, as to how many droves of oxen and Lake Eries of wine might have run through his great mill during the full term of his mortal career.  Fat men not immortal!  This very instant, old Lambert is rubbing his jolly abdomen in Paradise.

Now, to the fact of his not being rated a demi-god, was perhaps ascribable the circumstance, that Borabolla comported himself with less dignity, than was the wont of their Mardian majesties.  And truth to say, to have seen him regaling himself with one of his favorite cuttle-fish, its long snaky arms and feelers instinctively twining round his head as he ate; few intelligent observers would have opined that the individual before them was the sovereign lord of Mondoldo.

But what of the banquet of fish?  Shall we tell how the old king ungirdled himself thereto; how as the feast waxed toward its close, with one sad exception, he still remained sunny-sided all round; his disc of a face joyous as the South Side of Madeira in the hilarious season of grapes?  Shall we tell how we all grew glad and frank; and how the din of the dinner was heard far into night?