"You will never see paradise, Mustapha. The houris will have nought to do with so ugly a face as yours. It will turn them all squint-eyed to look at you."
"Do you think I know not the art of love-making?" said Mustapha, striking the attitude of a fashionable young man of the day.
Selim roared with laughter. "Mustapha making love? The thing is impossible; since, if the houri be in the sunshine of your good eye, you have no arm on that side to embrace her; and if you embrace her with the arm you have got, you have no eye on that side to look upon her beauty. Trust me, you old moulted peacock, that I shall get over Al Sirat before Mustapha has found a houri——"
"Hist!" said Mustapha, pointing to the entrance of the square from the seraglio court adjoining, and assuming an attitude of the gravest dignity. In a moment more the two officers knelt, and resting their foreheads on the ground, remained in that position until a lad of some twelve years approached them and touched the head of each with his foot, bidding them rise.
"I have come, good Selim, to see what new hounds you have for me," said the young Prince Mahomet.[29]
"Ah! my little Hoonkeawr![30] the Prophet, your namesake, has sent you a fine one; as lithe as a greyhound and as strong as a mastiff; and, if I mistake not, already trained for the game; for he came from the Balkans, where foxes run wild when and where they will."
"That is capital. I shall like him," cried the prince, with delight. "I must see him."
"Not to-day, your highness; for the boys are under the leech's charge. They have been put to the water-test, and are all packed snugly in their beds."
"The water-test, Selim, and you called me not?" said the boy, looking furious in his rage. "You knew I wanted to see it; and you told me not for spite. You will pay for this one day, you fat villain! And I want the hunt now. I came for it; did I not, Yusef?" addressing a eunuch, an old man with ashen face and decrepit body, but gorgeously arrayed, who accompanied the prince as his constant attendant.
"We must wait, I suppose," said the man, with a supercilious tone and toss of his head, as if to even speak in the presence of the soldiers were a degradation to his dignity.