“No, no, my dear, of course not. Only when he said something about our ever having a daughter, I was so surprised that I feared he might have suspected something, and for the moment regretted that we had deceived him about his ‘grandson.’”
“And, pray, who deceived him?” queried Kayenna, with icy severity. “I, for one, have not. I have never told him that our little darling was or was not a boy. If he choose to deceive himself or to be deceived by tricksters like your vagabond Vizier, that is his own concern, not mine. I know what his gesture signified; but, thank Allah, corporal punishment was abolished in my nursery by my angel mother, and my honored sire has not forgotten the occasion, I ween.”
Kayenna wore such a pensive smile of retrospective happiness in saying this that Muley Mustapha did not give a moment’s entertainment to his father-in-law’s counsel, but prudently resolved to put the bamboo plant to other and more profitable uses; and Shacabac, to whom he confided his troubles, commented sagely: “The spinster knoweth how to bring up children, and the bachelor to rule a wife. It is well that they remain single: else who would be willing to leave this happy world, had they the direction of its family affairs?”
“How hath it happened,” asked the Pasha, after ruminating some minutes on this proposition, “that thou thyself hast never married?”
“Solely in order that I might the better devote myself to the improvement and instruction of my fellowmen; for, if there be one man on earth who knoweth less than all others, it is he who is the husband of a wife, and she will be first to tell him the same. While Allah preserveth her, his halo shall never be too small for his head.
“No man knoweth what true happiness is until he getteth married: then is the knowledge rather a sweet memory than a new boon.
“Twice blessed is he in whose tent dwell both his mother and his wife’s mother; for, even though he gain not Paradise, yet shall he fear not Gehenna.
“In choosing a wife, disdain not youth nor beauty; for these are things which time will cure.
“Love not a woman for her riches; but, loving first the riches, thou shalt learn in time to love her for their sake.
