CHAPTER I.
He that repenteth too late may some time worry too soon.—The Kâtâmarana.
The Pasha Muley Mustapha was unhappy. He was a peaceloving, easy-tempered man, as Pashas go, and, when allowed to have his own way, was never inclined to ask for more. But now, after seven years of wedded life, he found his wishes thwarted, not for the first time, by the caprice of a woman, and that woman his only wife, Kayenna, well surnamed the Eloquent. The misunderstanding had arisen, innocently enough, in this way:—
“I think, my dear,” said Muley Mustapha, as he sat smoking his nargileh one day at the beginning of this history, while his wife reclined on a divan,—“I think, my dear, that my parents (may their memory be blessed!) made a great mistake in their treatment of me in my youth. I was brought up too strictly. They gave me no opportunity of seeing life in all its phases. Consequently, I find myself, in middle age, almost a stranger among my own subjects. I mean to adopt an entirely different system with little Muley.”
“In what way?” asked his wife, rising on her elbow, and casting a suspicious look at her lord.
“Well, in this way,” replied Muley Mustapha, deliberately,—“in this way. I intend to let him go out into the world, mingle with the youth of his own age, share in their sports, and, as the Giaours say, ‘sow his wild oats.’”
“‘In what way?’ asked his wife”
“Muley Mustapha,” said his wife, sitting bolt upright, “you shall do nothing of the sort. ‘Sow his wild oats,’ indeed! He shall never leave my sight, not for a single moment, until he is a grown man and I have provided him with a wife to take my place as guardian of his morals. It ill becomes the trusted vassal of my noble father, the Sultan of Kopaul, to talk thus of corrupting the child who is to be one day ruler of that mighty empire. You forget that fact, Muley Mustapha.”