This advice passed from hand to hand, and dispersed the crowd of widows. When the gentleman usher opened the door to let in a second parcel, not one was there. "Well, Seneschal, will you believe me another time?" said Mangogul informed of the desertion, to the good man, clapping him on the shoulder. "I promised to rid you of these female weepers, and I have done it. Yet they were very assiduous in making court to you, notwithstanding your fourscore and fifteen years of age. But whatever pretensions you may possibly have: for I am not ignorant of the facility you had to form pretensions on these ladies, I fancy you are obliged to me for their retreat. They gave you more embarras than pleasure."
The African author informs us, that the remembrance of this trial is kept up in Congo; and for that reason it is, that the government is so sparing of granting pensions: but this was not the only good effect of Cucufa's ring, as we shall see in the following chapter.
[CHAP. XXV.]
Twelfth Trial of the Ring.
A Law Case.
Rapes were severely punished in Congo: and there happened a most notorious one in Mangogul's reign. This prince, at his accession to the crown, had sworn, like all his predecessors, never to grant a pardon for that crime: but be laws ever so severe, they seldom curb those, whom a considerable advantage urges to infringe them. The criminal was condemned to lose that part of him, by which he had sinned; a cruel operation, of which he generally died; as the person who performed it, used less precaution than B——ll.
Kerfael, a young man of a good family, had now languished six months in a dungeon, waiting for the day of execution. Fatme, a young pretty woman, was his Lucretia and accuser. Every body knew, that they had been very well together: Fatme's indulgent husband took no exceptions against it: therefore it would be ungenteel in the public to intermeddle in their affairs.
After an undisturbed commerce of two years, whether thro' inconstancy or disgust, Kerfael took to a dancer at the opera of Banza, and grew cold towards Fatme, yet without coming to an open rupture. He resolved to make a decent retreat; which obliged him to continue his visits in the house. Fatme enraged for being thus forsaken, meditated revenge, and made use of this remnant of his assiduities to destroy her unfaithful lover.
One day, that the convenient husband had left them tête à tête, and that Kerfael, having ungirt his scymeter, was endeavouring to allay Fatme's suspicions by protestations, which cost nothing to lovers, but never surprize the credulity of a jealous woman; she assumed an affrighted air, and having tore her dress at five or six pulls, shriek'd out horridly, and call'd to her husband and domestics for help; who ran immediately, and became witnesses to the injury, which Fatme said she received from Kerfael; and shewing the scymeter, added: "This the infamous villain lifted at my head ten times to make me submit to his will."