Although the Lady Capilla was unwilling to reciprocate the passion of Champou the man, she was not averse to quiet interviews with Champou the Prince.  In the course of one of these (see my picture), as she sat listening to his carefully-rehearsed and really artistic avowals, with her tail hanging out of the window, she suddenly interrupted him: 

“My dear Prince,” said she, “it is all nonsense, you know, to ask for my heart; but I am not mean; you shall have a lock of my hair.”

“Do you think,” replied the Prince, “that I could be so sordid as to accept a single jewel from that glorious crown?  I love this hair of yours very dearly, I admit, but only because of its connection with your divine head.  Sever that connection, and I should value it no more than I would a tail plucked from its native cow.”

This comparison seems to me a very fine one, but tastes differ, and to the Lady Capilla it seemed quite the reverse.  Rising indignantly, she marched away, her queue running in through the window and gradually tapering off the interview, as it were.  Prince Champou saw that he had missed his opportunity, and resolved to repair his error.  Straightway he forged an order on Beersheba for thirty yards of love-lock.  To serve this writ he sent his business partner; for the Prince was wont to beguile his dragging leisure by tonsorial diversions in an obscure quarter of the town.  At first Beersheba was sceptical, but when he saw the writing in real ink, his scruples vanished, and he chopped off the amount of souvenir demanded.

Now Champou’s partner was the Court barber, and by the use of a peculiar hair oil which the two of them had concocted, they soon managed to balden the pates of all the male aristocracy of the place.  Then, to supply the demand so created, they devised beautiful wigs from the Lady Capilla’s lost tresses, which they sold at a marvellous profit.  And so they were enabled to retire from this narrative with good incomes.

It was known that the Lady Capilla, who, since the alleged murder of one Beersheba, had shut herself up like a hermit, or a jack-knife, would re-enter society; and a great ball was given to do her honour.  The feauty, bank, and rashion of Algammon had assembled in the Guildhall for that purpose.  While the revelry was at its fiercest, the dancing at its loosest, the rooms at their hottest, and the perspiration at spring-tide, there was a sound of wheels outside, begetting an instant hush of expectation within.  The dancers ceased to spin, and all the gentlemen crowded about the door.  As the Lady Capilla entered, these instinctively fell into two lines, and she passed down the space between, with her little tail behind her.  As the end of the latter came into the room, the wigs of the two gentlemen nearest the door leaped off to join their parent stem.  In their haste to recover them the two gentlemen bent eagerly forward, knocking their shining pows together with a vehemence