“I—I don’t know,” stuttered the bewildered Pasha, who did not see why he was especially to blame for the blunder of a dead and gone Soothsayer. Then, clutching at the suggestion of a companion in misery, he added: “By all means, my dear, let us call in Shacabac; and he may advise us for the best. He has some very sound views upon matrimony, I know.”
“Yes, no doubt he has,” said Kayenna, ironically. “I can fancy what they are like, but I should wish to have him repeat them to me.” Kayenna did not admire the abstruse philosophy of Shacabac, which she did not fully understand; but, with keen feminine intuition, she knew that it could be only evil, for she disliked the philosopher. She was, however, seriously impressed with one of his more homely maxims, which she always endeavored to follow, namely:—
“Talk not with thy guest of his own affairs, for with those he is sufficiently acquainted; but discourse ever of thine own,—of thy good luck and ill, of thy horses, thy servants, thy children, and thine ailments. If thou dost not succeed thereby in making him feel at home, thou mayst at least induce him to wish himself there.”
Fortified by these maxims, Kayenna consented to the presence of the Sage at the family council.
The messenger despatched for Shacabac found him in his lecture hall, discoursing to a class of scholars on Omens, and illustrating his words of wisdom with apposite examples. Even royalty had to wait until the precious pearls falling from his lips should be gathered by his hearers. He was saying:—
“It is very lucky to find a horseshoe, if there be a horse attached; but unlucky, if the owner be about.
“It is a bad omen to meet, on leaving thy house in the morning, a mad dog, a tiger which hath not breakfasted, or a man to whom thou owest money.
“Steel cuts love. The great Sultan Ras-el-Dasl never knew perfect conjugal bliss after inadvertently throwing the carving knife at his favorite sultana.
“To break a mirror is also portentous of evil. Backsheesh, the porter, once incautiously smashed a large pierglass over the head of his spouse; and it cost him a month’s fees to replace them both.
“It is unlucky to sleep thirteen in a bed.”