It was a common saying of old, that King Pluto gave suppers; some say he is giving them still. If so, he is keeping tip-top company, old Pluto:—Emperors and Czars; Great Moguls and Great Khans; Grand Lamas and Grand Dukes; Prince Regents and Queen Dowagers:—Tamerlane hob-a-nobbing with Bonaparte; Antiochus with Solyman the Magnificent; Pisistratus pledging Pilate; Semiramis eating bon-bons with Bloody Mary, and her namesake of Medicis; the Thirty Tyrants quaffing three to one with the Council of Ten; and Sultans, Satraps, Viziers, Hetmans, Soldans, Landgraves, Bashaws, Doges, Dauphins, Infantas, Incas, and Caciques looking on.
Again: at Arbela, the conqueror of conquerors, conquering son of Olympia by Jupiter himself, sent out cards to his captains,— Hephestion, Antigonus, Antipater, and the rest—to join him at ten, p.m., in the Temple of Belus; there, to sit down to a victorious supper, off the gold plate of the Assyrian High Priests. How majestically he poured out his old Madeira that night!—feeling grand and lofty as the Himmalehs; yea, all Babylon nodded her towers in his soul!
Spread, heaped up, stacked with good things; and redolent of citrons and grapes, hilling round tall vases of wine; and here and there, waving with fresh orange-boughs, among whose leaves, myriads of small tapers gleamed like fire-flies in groves,—Abrazza’s glorious board showed like some banquet in Paradise: Ceres and Pomona presiding; and jolly Bacchus, like a recruit with a mettlesome rifle, staggering back as he fires off the bottles of vivacious champagne.
In ranges, roundabout stood living candelabras:—lackeys, gayly bedecked, with tall torches in their hands; and at one end, stood trumpeters, bugles at their lips.
“This way, my dear Media!—this seat at my left—Noble Taji!—my right. Babbalanja!—Mohi—where you are. But where’s pretty Yoomy?— Gone to meditate in the moonlight? ah!—Very good. Let the banquet begin. A blast there!”
And charge all did.
The venison, wild boar’s meat, and buffalo-humps, were extraordinary; the wine, of rare vintages, like bottled lightning; and the first course, a brilliant affair, went off like a rocket.
But as yet, Babbalanja joined not in the revels. His mood was on him; and apart he sat; silently eyeing the banquet; and ever and anon muttering,—“Fogle-foggle, fugle-fi.—”
The first fury of the feast over, said King Media, pouring out from a heavy flagon into his goblet, “Abrazza, these suppers are wondrous fine things.”
“Ay, my dear lord, much better than dinners.”