CHAPTER XI.
Some men borrow books; some men steal books; and others beg presentation copies from the author.
Ben Haround.
The courier told only the truth. Dark and dangerous times had befallen poor old Muley Mustapha in his lonely palace of Ubikwi. For days he had wandered disconsolate through the zenana, missing the presence of Kayenna, which had ever been as the cooling east wind to his fevered brow; missing Shacabac, whose words of wisdom had so often wooed him to repose; missing Al Choppah and his diverting bowstring and scimitar that had enlivened many a long hour.
He did not miss little Muley; for, of a truth, he had seldom laid eyes upon the offspring whom he unjustly blamed as the cause of all his woes. And now, when he strayed into the child’s sleeping-room, he noted with a shocked sense of the incongruous how it was decorated with the toys and the arms of virility,—ghastly relics of the futile attempt to deceive his people and the people of two greater nations!
“If she had never been born! If she had had the good taste to die any time during the past miserable eighteen years! If that villanous old Soothsayer”—
Here he was startled by a voice at his elbow,—“Your Highness was pleased to allude to me?”
It was the new Soothsayer, Badeg, looking, if possible, more impudently familiar than ever.
Muley Mustapha plucked up a spirit. “No, I was not alluding to you; though I was thinking of a villanous Soothsayer—an old one—who went to his reward long ago. But what in the name of Eblis is it to you?”
