To this pertinent question the venerable Muley Mustapha made no rejoinder, because in truth he had fallen asleep ere the Sage had been fairly launched on his discourse, which would have been lost to posterity, had not the speaker thoughtfully taken notes of the same,—a practice commended to all preachers afflicted with drowsy congregations.
Shacabac withdrew silently from the presence, musing—not for the first time—on the generous lack of appreciation bestowed by the great upon the wise. As he was about to enter his humble domicile, he suddenly perceived a large tiger stretched sleeping before his hearth, whereupon he moved noiselessly to the roof of the house without disturbing the fierce animal or alarming the other inmates who might molest the unbidden visitor. Unhappily, his delicacy was but ill rewarded; for his rich and parsimonious uncle, whose fortune he subsequently inherited, on entering the kitchen the next morning, was incontinently devoured by the ungrateful brute. The sad event was commemorated by the Sage in a noble threnody, wherein the virtue of resignation is beautifully set forth. Rare indeed was the occasion, or dire the catastrophe, from which the worthy man could not extract some moral or material benefit.
CHAPTER V.
An omen, said the Fakir, is a sign of the future. Blame not the omen, but the future, if the sign prove not true.—Shiraz, the Younger.
So it came to pass that little Muley grew up into his nineteenth year, a tall, well-favored, graceful stripling, but distinctly a “mother’s boy”; and nobody but his parents and the discreet Shacabac held, or thought they held, the secret of his effeminate appearance.
Then one day, sudden and fearful as the khamsin wind of the desert, came a message from the aged grandsire, informing Muley Mustapha and Kayenna that he had contracted a noble alliance for the heir to his throne with the Princess Amine, only daughter of his neighbor, the powerful King of Nhulpar.
Now here was a most serious complication. The King of Nhulpar was the mightiest monarch of all the earth. Twenty caliphates trembled at his nod; an hundred thousand lances were levelled at his word; the number of wild riders ready to follow his standard were as the sands of the desert multiplied by the sands of the seashore. When he said, “Do this,” it must be done, whether it could be done or not. In fact, he rather liked performing impossibilities by proxy, the daring one who failed in the task being added to his Majesty’s large and varied collection in the royal mausoleum of Dedhed.
Had he known that the Sultan of Kopaul in offering his “grandson’s” hand in marriage to the Princess Amine was essaying the most impossible of all impossibilities, he would have been delighted beyond expression. He had not a single Sultan’s head in his album; but even that of a Pasha was not to be despised, as Muley Mustapha thought with a shudder, when he was apprised of his father-in-law’s well-meant but most compromising negotiations.
What was to be done? It was not possible much longer to deceive the old Sultan; and it was absolutely out of the question to traverse the wishes of the fiery king.
“You see to what a pass you and your vagabond Vizier have brought us,” said Kayenna. “Now, mayhap, you may be able between you to extricate us from it.”