I am forced for want of room to pass over many circumstances that would add greatly to the beauty of this history, and am sorry I must dash the reader’s impatience by acquainting him, that notwithstanding the eagerness of the old king and youthful ardour of the prince, the nuptials were obliged to be postponed; the archbishop declaring that it was essentially necessary to have a dispensation from the pope, the parties being related within the forbidden degrees; a woman that never was, and a man that had been, being deemed first cousins in the eye of the canon law.

Hence arose a new difficulty.  The religion of the Quifferiquiminians was totally opposite to that of the papists.  The former believed in nothing but grace; and they had a high-priest of their own, who pretended that he was master of the whole fee-simple of grace, and by that possession could cause every thing to have been that never had been, and could prevent every thing that had been from ever having been.  “We have nothing to do, said the prince to the king, but to send a solemn embassy to the high-priest of grace, with a present of a hundred thousand million of ingots, and he will cause your charming no-daughter to have been, and will prevent my having died, and then there will be no occasion for a dispensation from your old fool at Rome.”—­How! thou impious, atheistical bag of drybones, cried the old king; dost thou profane our holy religion?  Thou shalt have no daughter of mine, thou three-legged skeleton—­Go and be buried and be damned, as thou must be; for as thou art dead, thou art past repentance:  I would sooner give my child to a baboon, who has one leg more than thou hast, than bestow her on such a reprobate corpse—­You had better give your one-legged infanta to the baboon, said the prince, they are fitter for one another—­As much a corpse as I am, I am preferable to nobody; and who the devil would have married your no-daughter, but a dead body!  For my religion, I lived and died in it, and it is not in my power to change it now if I would—­but for your part—­a great shout interrupted this dialogue, and the captain of the guard rushing into the royal closet, acquainted his majesty, that the second princess, in revenge of the prince’s neglect, had given her hand to a drysalter, who was a common-council-man, and that the city, in consideration of the match, had proclaimed them king and queen, allowing his majesty to retain the title for his life, which they had fixed for the term of six months; and ordering, in respect of his royal birth, that the prince should immediately lie in state and have a pompous funeral.

This revolution was so sudden and so universal, that all parties approved, or were forced to seem to approve it.  The old king died the next day, as the courtiers said, for joy; the prince of Quifferiquimini was buried in spite of his appeal to the law of nations; and the youngest princess went distracted, and was shut up in a madhouse, calling out day and night for a husband with three legs.