“A thousand seguins for silence!” groaned a gouty raja, prancing high and low in a German waltz.
“I am shamed—disgraced forever!” muttered an Arabian astrologer, in the middle of a Scotch reel.
“Yoo-ti-hu—the devil seize thee!” shouted a pious Musselman.
“Have mercy!” cried a blasphemous heretic.
“Mercy! mercy!” echoed the dancers one and all—“Do, gentle Yoo-ti-hu, have mercy, and cease thy accursed music!”
“Pardon him! pardon him!” roared the magnanimous Tally-yang-sang—his ribs rattling frightfully against the post; “in the name of the prophet pardon him ere I bruise myself into an Egyptian mummy!”
“Yoo-ti-hu cease! thou art pardoned!” cried the king, in a piteous tone, “my seal—my life on it thou shall not be harmed!”
“Very well,” said Yoo-ti-hu, still striking his lute; “but I must have Omanea as a bride.”
“Thou shalt have her!—take her!—she is thine!” shouted the rheumatic monarch.
“Thy oath on it,” quoth Yoo-ti-hu.