[FN#296] A violent temper, accompanied with voies de fait and personal violence, is by no means rare amongst Eastern princesses; and terrible tales are told in Persia concerning the daughters of Fath Ali Shah. Few men and no woman can resist the temptations of absolute command. The daughter of a certain Dictator all-powerful in the Argentine Republic was once seen on horseback with a white bridle of peculiar leather; it was made of the skin of a man who had boasted of her favours. The slave-girls suffer first from these masterful young persons and then it is the turn of the eunuchry.
[FN#297] A neat touch; she was too thorough-bred to care for herself first.
[FN#298] Here the ground or earth is really kissed.
[FN#299] Corresponding with our phrase, “His heart was in his mouth.”
[FN#300] Very artful is the contrast of the love-lorn Princess’s humility with her furious behaviour, in the pride of her purity, while she was yet a virginette and fancy free.
[FN#301] Arab. “Suhbat-hu” lit.=in company with him, a popular idiom in Egypt and Syria. It often occurs in the Bresl. Edit.
[FN#302] In the Mac. Edit. “Shahzamán,” a corruption of Sháh
Zamán=King of the Age. (See vol. i. 2)
[FN#303] For a note on this subject see vol. ii. 2.
[FN#304] i.e. bathe her and apply cosmetics to remove all traces of travel.
[FN#305] These pretentious and curious displays of coquetry are not uncommon in handsome slave-girls when newly bought; and it is a kind of pundonor to humour them. They may also refuse their favours and a master who took possession of their persons by brute force would be blamed by his friends, men and women. Even the most despotic of despots, Fath Ali Shah of Persia, put up with refusals from his slave-girls and did not, as would the mean-minded, marry them to the grooms or cooks of the palace.