Ali-Jân rose gravely and stood swaying. "When--" he began solemnly. "When--"
Then he subsided, gravely and solemnly. The roar of consequent laughter was dominated by Babar's joyous shout, "I have it! I have it!"
"When Ali drinks, his legs are not his own,
Each seeks support and neither stands alone."
"Shâbâsh! Wâh! Wâh! Ha! Ha! Ha!" The uproarious mirth echoed out into the still night.
"The Emperor is merry," quoth the sentries in the valley, with a smile.
"Aye! but he looks ill for all that," said an orthodox old trooper. "I saw him shiver yestere'en when he swam the stream in his clothes, and the water was lukewarm. Time was, not so long ago, when he would have swum an ice torrent and felt no cold; now, he hath taken a chill."
Whether the man was right in the cause thereof, he was correct in the illness. The next morning found Babar down with so severe a defluxion, fever, and cough, that he spat blood. The court physician dosed him with narcissus flowers steeped in wine, and Ali-Jân, Târdi-Beg and all the other boon companions sat with the monarch to cheer him up by laying the blame of the illness on the cold, or the heat, or what not. But Babar himself knew whence the indisposition proceeded, and what conduct had led to this chastisement. What business had he to laugh at folk in verse for his own amusement? Still less, no matter how mean or contemptible the doggerel, to take pride in it and write it down? It was regrettable that a tongue which could repeat the sublimest productions, should lend itself to unworthy rhymes; it was melancholy that a heart capable of nobler conceptions should stoop to meaner and despicable verses. From henceforth he would abstain religiously from vituperative poetry.
This excellent resolution--or something else--proved curative; and Babar was soon on the mend and was able to write the following:
"Oh! what can I do with you, flagrant tongue?
On your account I deserve to be hung.
How long will you utter bad parodies,
One half indecent, the other half lies?
If you wish to escape being damned--Up rein!
Ride off--nor venture near verse again."
To which he appended a quatrain in his best Arabic: