It is recorded that during that triennial agitation
no less than twenty-three Circles perished in domestic discord.
Great indeed was the peril. It seemed as though the Priests
had no choice between submission and extermination; when suddenly
the course of events was completely changed by one of those
picturesque incidents which Statesmen ought never to neglect,
often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate,
because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal
to the sympathies of the populace.
It happened that an Isosceles of a low type, with a brain little
if at all above four degrees -- accidentally dabbling in the colours
of some Tradesman whose shop he had plundered -- painted himself,
or caused himself to be painted (for the story varies)
with the twelve colours of a Dodecagon. Going into the Market Place
he accosted in a feigned voice a maiden, the orphan daughter
of a noble Polygon, whose affection in former days he had sought
in vain; and by a series of deceptions -- aided, on the one side,
by a string of lucky accidents too long to relate, and on the other,
by an almost inconceivable fatuity and neglect of ordinary precautions
on the part of the relations of the bride -- he succeeded in
consummating the marriage.
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