The subjects of the Caliph, like their Sovereign, being great admirers of women and apricots from Kirmith, felt their mouths water at these promises, but were totally unable to gratify their hankering, for no one knew which way the stranger had gone.
As to the Caliph’s other requisition, the result was different. The learned, the half-learned, and those who were neither, but fancied themselves equal to both, came boldly to hazard their beards, and all shamefully lost them.
The exaction of these forfeitures, which found sufficient employment for the eunuchs, gave them such a smell of singed hair as greatly to disgust the ladies of the seraglio, and make it necessary that this new occupation of their guardians should be transferred into other hands.
At length, however, an old man presented himself whose beard was a cubit and a half longer than any that had appeared before him. The officers of the palace whispered to each other, as they ushered him in, “What a pity such a beard should be burnt!” Even the Caliph, when he saw it, concurred with them in opinion, but his concern was entirely needless. This venerable personage read the characters with facility, and explained them verbatim as follows: “We were made where everything good is made; we are the least of the wonders of a place where all is wonderful, and deserving the sight of the first potentate on earth.”
“You translate admirably!” cried Vathek; “I know to what these marvellous characters allude. Let him receive as many robes of honour and thousands of sequins of gold as he hath spoken words. I am in some measure relieved from the perplexity that embarrassed me!”
Vathek invited the old main to dine, and even to remain some days in the palace. Unluckily for him, he accepted the offer; for the Caliph, having ordered him next morning to be called, said: “Read again to me what you have read already; I cannot hear too often the promise that is made me, the completion of which I languish to obtain.”
The old man forthwith put on his green spectacles, but they instantly dropped from his nose on perceiving that the characters he had read the day preceding had given place to others of different import.
“What ails you?” asked the Caliph; “and why these symptoms of wonder?”
“Sovereign of the world,” replied the old man, “these sabres hold another language to-day from that they yesterday held.”
“How say you?” returned Vathek; “but it matters not! tell me, if you can, what they mean.”