“A very charming trait in her character,” returned Bracy. “I’ll mention it to the Prince. I don’t know that there ever was an Englishwoman queen of Persia; but that’s no reason there never should be one.”
Bracy was accordingly introduced to the young lady, and led her, smiling and blushing, up to Frere, by whom he seated her, and paved the way for conversation by the following remark:—
“Tharmy buoi aintsheaz tunnar?” which for the damsel’s edification he translated—“Asylum of the Universe! the maiden, the daughter of roses, salutes thee!”
After a short interval Lady Lombard again bore down upon them in full sail, towing in her wake a small, hirsute, baboon-like individual, evidently one of her menagerie.
“There’s a chimpanzee!” whispered Bracy to Frere. “Now, if that picture of ugliness turns out an eastern traveller we’re gone ’coons.”
“All right,” returned Frere in the same tone, “he’s only an exiled something. He came to our shop with a recommendation from some of the Parisian savans the other day.”
“I must trouble you once again, Mr. Bracy,” insinuated Lady Lombard. “Professor Malchapeau is dying to be introduced.”
“No trouble, but a pleasure,” returned Bracy. “I shall have the greatest satisfaction in making two such illustrious individuals known to each other. Does the Professor speak English?”
“Yas; I vas spik Angleesh von pritté veil,” replied the person alluded to, strutting forward on tiptoe. “I ave zie honaire to vish you how you did, my prince?”
Frere made some reply, which Bracy paraphrased into “The descendant of many Shahs kisses the hem of the mantle of the Father of science.”