So Too met me with a broad smile. I kowtowed profoundly. He expressed the hope that, his “tall, graceful, broad-shouldered, handsome visaged guest of knightly bearing” had slept well. “As for me,” he added, “my miserable, little, crooked frame was full of pangs and tortures all night long.”
To look at him it was hard to see any effects of all these “pangs and tortures.”
He seemed the very picture of good health and spirits. His broad face was as smooth as a baby’s and his little eyes sparkled with suppressed humor and mischief. We grew quite merry over our morning meal.
I was playing a part. I determined to let him think that by degrees I was becoming cured of my extravagant affection for Bulger.
With every cup of tea he drank his cold exterior kept melting off. I felt that if I left him quite to himself, he would give me a clearer view of his inside nature than if I attempted to draw him out by leading questions. I called into use all my wit and imagination. I buried him beneath compliments and fine speeches. I told him some of my most diverting stories. At last, I was successful. The servants were directed to withdraw. So Too now assured me in the name of all his ancestors, that I was the most delightful guest that had ever sipped tea beneath his roof. He entreated me to honor him by rising and placing my tall, graceful, knightly form along side of his miserable, puny little rack of bones.
I made haste to accept the invitation, protesting, however, that I was quite overcome by the honors showered upon me.
He maintained, with equal pertinacity that he was utterly unfit to occupy a seat by my side.
So we continued our war of compliments. Suddenly So Too thrust his right hand under his richly embroidered tunic and drew forth a small case of tablets, which folded upon each other in a curious way. He gave it a slight jerk and it flew open and unfolded itself. “I have been thinking,” he began, “of the approaching trial of thy dog on the charge of witchcraft.”
A lump arose in my throat at these words, but I gulped it down and simply bowed my head as a sign of my attention.
“Thou art a stranger in our land,” continued So Too, “perchance thou wilt be pleased to know the things which I am about to tell thee. Nowhere else in the great world can Perfect Justice be found save in the dominions of our gracious Emperor, him of the Sacred Countenance. While thy nation and the rest of the Western world knew no other law than force or fraud, we had already received from our ancestors thousands of volumes filled with the rules of Perfect Justice. Happy indeed should be that criminal whose good fortune leads him to commit his crime in our favored land. His punishment will be exactly what he deserves. Thou, as the advocate of this fortunate prisoner, who is so dear to thee, art allowed to choose the yamun before whom he shall be tried. I, So Too, thy friend, do here set before thee the list of yamuns so thou mayst choose thine own arbiter.”