by Poe · Cluster: Satire of Society · Epigram · Satire
Abstract
A satirical frame-tale extending the Arabian Nights: Scheherazade tells of Sindbad’s encounters with modern marvels of science, which the incredulous king finds too improbable, and has her executed. Themes of truth stranger than fiction, satire and wonder.
Testo / Text
Parti / Parts
Readability (prose)51.1 Flesch ease14.9 FK grade17.8 Fog9% complex35.2 words/sent
Connections
Archetypes: Trickster Themes & Concepts: Appearance vs Reality, Satire of Society, Wonder and Gratitude, Critique of Progress Forms & Genres: Satire, Short Story Historical References: Eastern Religion Comparative Religion
Testo integrale / Full text
Truth is stranger than fiction.—Old Saying
Having had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental
investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a work
which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at
all, even in Europe; and which has never been quoted, to my
knowledge, by any American—if we except, perhaps, the author of
the “Curiosities of American Literature”;—having had occasion, I
say, to turn over some pages of the first-mentioned very
remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to discover that
the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error
respecting the fate of the vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, as
that fate is depicted in the “Arabian Nights”; and that the
_dénouement_ there given, if not altogether inaccurate, as far as
it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much
farther.
For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the
inquisitive reader to the “Isitsöornot” itself; but in the
meantime, I shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I
there discovered.
It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a
certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not
only puts her to death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the
prophet, to espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his
dominions, and the next morning to deliver her up to the
executioner.
Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with
a religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit
upon him as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was
interrupted one afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit
from his grand vizier, to whose daughter, it appears, there had
occurred an idea.
Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would
either redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty,
or perish, after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the
attempt.
Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year
(which makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her
father, the grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her
hand. This hand the king eagerly accepts—(he had intended to take
it at all events, and had put off the matter from day to day,
only through fear of the vizier),—but, in accepting it now, he
gives all parties very distinctly to understand, that, grand
vizier or no grand vizier, he has not the slightest design of
giving up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. When,
therefore, the fair Scheherazade insisted upon marrying the king,
and did actually marry him despite her father’s excellent advice
not to do any thing of the kind—when she would and did marry him,
I say, will I, nill I, it was with her beautiful black eyes as
thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow.
It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading
Machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very ingenious little plot in
her mind. On the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon I
forget what specious pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch
sufficiently near that of the royal pair to admit of easy
conversation from bed to bed; and, a little before cock-crowing,
she took care to awaken the good monarch, her husband (who bore
her none the worse will because he intended to wring her neck on
the morrow),—she managed to awaken him, I say, (although on
account of a capital conscience and an easy digestion, he slept
well) by the profound interest of a story (about a rat and a
black cat, I think) which she was narrating (all in an undertone,
of course) to her sister. When the day broke, it so happened that
this history was not altogether finished, and that Scheherazade,
in the nature of things could not finish it just then, since it
was high time for her to get up and be bowstrung—a thing very
little more pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel!
The king’s curiosity, however, prevailing, I am sorry to say,
even over his sound religious principles, induced him for this
once to postpone the fulfilment of his vow until next morning,
for the purpose and with the hope of hearing that night how it
fared in the end with the black cat (a black cat, I think it was)
and the rat.
The night having arrived, however, the lady Scheherazade not only
put the finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat (the rat
was blue) but before she well knew what she was about, found
herself deep in the intricacies of a narration, having reference
(if I am not altogether mistaken) to a pink horse (with green
wings) that went, in a violent manner, by clockwork, and was
wound up with an indigo key. With this history the king was even
more profoundly interested than with the other—and, as the day
broke before its conclusion (notwithstanding all the queen’s
endeavors to get through with it in time for the bowstringing),
there was again no resource but to postpone that ceremony as
before, for twenty-four hours. The next night there happened a
similar accident with a similar result; and then the next—and
then again the next; so that, in the end, the good monarch,
having been unavoidably deprived of all opportunity to keep his
vow during a period of no less than one thousand and one nights,
either forgets it altogether by the expiration of this time, or
gets himself absolved of it in the regular way, or (what is more
probable) breaks it outright, as well as the head of his father
confessor. At all events, Scheherazade, who, being lineally
descended from Eve, fell heir, perhaps, to the whole seven
baskets of talk, which the latter lady, we all know, picked up
from under the trees in the garden of Eden; Scheherazade, I say,
finally triumphed, and the tariff upon beauty was repealed.
Now, this conclusion (which is that of the story as we have it
upon record) is, no doubt, excessively proper and pleasant—but
alas! like a great many pleasant things, is more pleasant than
true, and I am indebted altogether to the “Isitsöornot” for the
means of correcting the error. “Le mieux,” says a French proverb,
“est l’ennemi du bien,” and, in mentioning that Scheherazade had
inherited the seven baskets of talk, I should have added that she
put them out at compound interest until they amounted to
seventy-seven.
“My dear sister,” said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I
quote the language of the “Isitsöornot” at this point, verbatim)
“my dear sister,” said she, “now that all this little difficulty
about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is
so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great
indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry
to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion
of Sinbad the sailor. This person went through numerous other and
more interesting adventures than those which I related; but the
truth is, I felt sleepy on the particular night of their
narration, and so was seduced into cutting them short—a grievous
piece of misconduct, for which I only trust that Allah will
forgive me. But even yet it is not too late to remedy my great
neglect—and as soon as I have given the king a pinch or two in
order to wake him up so far that he may stop making that horrible
noise, I will forthwith entertain you (and him if he pleases)
with the sequel of this very remarkable story.”
Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it from the
“Isitsöornot,” expressed no very particular intensity of
gratification; but the king, having been sufficiently pinched, at
length ceased snoring, and finally said, “Hum!” and then “Hoo!”
when the queen, understanding these words (which are no doubt
Arabic) to signify that he was all attention, and would do his
best not to snore any more—the queen, I say, having arranged
these matters to her satisfaction, re-entered thus, at once, into
the history of Sinbad the sailor:
“‘At length, in my old age,’ [these are the words of Sinbad
himself, as retailed by Scheherazade]—‘at length, in my old age,
and after enjoying many years of tranquillity at home, I became
once more possessed of a desire of visiting foreign countries;
and one day, without acquainting any of my family with my design,
I packed up some bundles of such merchandise as was most precious
and least bulky, and, engaging a porter to carry them, went with
him down to the sea-shore, to await the arrival of any chance
vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into some region
which I had not as yet explored.
“‘Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down
beneath some trees, and looked out into the ocean in the hope of
perceiving a ship, but during several hours we saw none whatever.
At length I fancied that I could hear a singular buzzing or
humming sound; and the porter, after listening awhile, declared
that he also could distinguish it. Presently it grew louder, and
then still louder, so that we could have no doubt that the object
which caused it was approaching us. At length, on the edge of the
horizon, we discovered a black speck, which rapidly increased in
size until we made it out to be a vast monster, swimming with a
great part of its body above the surface of the sea. It came
toward us with inconceivable swiftness, throwing up huge waves of
foam around its breast, and illuminating all that part of the sea
through which it passed, with a long line of fire that extended
far off into the distance.
“‘As the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly. Its length
was equal to that of three of the loftiest trees that grow, and
it was as wide as the great hall of audience in your palace, O
most sublime and munificent of the Caliphs. Its body, which was
unlike that of ordinary fishes, was as solid as a rock, and of a
jetty blackness throughout all that portion of it which floated
above the water, with the exception of a narrow blood-red streak
that completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated beneath
the surface, and of which we could get only a glimpse now and
then as the monster rose and fell with the billows, was entirely
covered with metallic scales, of a color like that of the moon in
misty weather. The back was flat and nearly white, and from it
there extended upwards of six spines, about half the length of
the whole body.
“‘This horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive;
but, as if to make up for this deficiency, it was provided with
at least four score of eyes, that protruded from their sockets
like those of the green dragon-fly, and were arranged all around
the body in two rows, one above the other, and parallel to the
blood-red streak, which seemed to answer the purpose of an
eyebrow. Two or three of these dreadful eyes were much larger
than the others, and had the appearance of solid gold.
“‘Although this beast approached us, as I have before said, with
the greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by
necromancy—for it had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like
a duck, nor wings like the seashell which is blown along in the
manner of a vessel; nor yet did it writhe itself forward as do
the eels. Its head and its tail were shaped precisely alike,
only, not far from the latter, were two small holes that served
for nostrils, and through which the monster puffed out its thick
breath with prodigious violence, and with a shrieking,
disagreeable noise.
“‘Our terror at beholding this hideous thing was very great, but
it was even surpassed by our astonishment, when upon getting a
nearer look, we perceived upon the creature’s back a vast number
of animals about the size and shape of men, and altogether much
resembling them, except that they wore no garments (as men do),
being supplied (by nature, no doubt) with an ugly uncomfortable
covering, a good deal like cloth, but fitting so tight to the
skin, as to render the poor wretches laughably awkward, and put
them apparently to severe pain. On the very tips of their heads
were certain square-looking boxes, which, at first sight, I
thought might have been intended to answer as turbans, but I soon
discovered that they were excessively heavy and solid, and I
therefore concluded they were contrivances designed, by their
great weight, to keep the heads of the animals steady and safe
upon their shoulders. Around the necks of the creatures were
fastened black collars, (badges of servitude, no doubt,) such as
we keep on our dogs, only much wider and infinitely stiffer, so
that it was quite impossible for these poor victims to move their
heads in any direction without moving the body at the same time;
and thus they were doomed to perpetual contemplation of their
noses—a view puggish and snubby in a wonderful, if not positively
in an awful degree.
“‘When the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood,
it suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a great extent, and
emitted from it a terrible flash of fire, accompanied by a dense
cloud of smoke, and a noise that I can compare to nothing but
thunder. As the smoke cleared away, we saw one of the odd
man-animals standing near the head of the large beast with a
trumpet in his hand, through which (putting it to his mouth) he
presently addressed us in loud, harsh, and disagreeable accents,
that, perhaps, we should have mistaken for language, had they not
come altogether through the nose.
“‘Being thus evidently spoken to, I was at a loss how to reply,
as I could in no manner understand what was said; and in this
difficulty I turned to the porter, who was near swooning through
affright, and demanded of him his opinion as to what species of
monster it was, what it wanted, and what kind of creatures those
were that so swarmed upon its back. To this the porter replied,
as well as he could for trepidation, that he had once before
heard of this sea-beast; that it was a cruel demon, with bowels
of sulphur and blood of fire, created by evil genii as the means
of inflicting misery upon mankind; that the things upon its back
were vermin, such as sometimes infest cats and dogs, only a
little larger and more savage; and that these vermin had their
uses, however evil—for, through the torture they caused the beast
by their nibbling and stingings, it was goaded into that degree
of wrath which was requisite to make it roar and commit ill, and
so fulfil the vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked genii.
“This account determined me to take to my heels, and, without
once even looking behind me, I ran at full speed up into the
hills, while the porter ran equally fast, although nearly in an
opposite direction, so that, by these means, he finally made his
escape with my bundles, of which I have no doubt he took
excellent care—although this is a point I cannot determine, as I
do not remember that I ever beheld him again.
“‘For myself, I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men-vermin
(who had come to the shore in boats) that I was very soon
overtaken, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to the beast, which
immediately swam out again into the middle of the sea.
“‘I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a comfortable home
to peril my life in such adventures as this; but regret being
useless, I made the best of my condition, and exerted myself to
secure the goodwill of the man-animal that owned the trumpet, and
who appeared to exercise authority over his fellows. I succeeded
so well in this endeavor that, in a few days, the creature
bestowed upon me various tokens of his favor, and in the end even
went to the trouble of teaching me the rudiments of what it was
vain enough to denominate its language; so that, at length, I was
enabled to converse with it readily, and came to make it
comprehend the ardent desire I had of seeing the world.
“‘Washish squashish squeak, Sinbad, hey-diddle diddle, grunt unt
grumble, hiss, fiss, whiss,’ said he to me, one day after
dinner—but I beg a thousand pardons, I had forgotten that your
majesty is not conversant with the dialect of the Cock-neighs (so
the man-animals were called; I presume because their language
formed the connecting link between that of the horse and that of
the rooster). With your permission, I will translate. ‘Washish
squashish,’ and so forth:—that is to say, ‘I am happy to find, my
dear Sinbad, that you are really a very excellent fellow; we are
now about doing a thing which is called circumnavigating the
globe; and since you are so desirous of seeing the world, I will
strain a point and give you a free passage upon back of the
beast.’”
When the Lady Scheherazade had proceeded thus far, relates the
“Isitsöornot,” the king turned over from his left side to his
right, and said:
“It is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen, that you
omitted, hitherto, these latter adventures of Sinbad. Do you know
I think them exceedingly entertaining and strange?”
The king having thus expressed himself, we are told, the fair
Scheherazade resumed her history in the following words:
“Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative—‘I thanked the
man-animal for its kindness, and soon found myself very much at
home on the beast, which swam at a prodigious rate through the
ocean; although the surface of the latter is, in that part of the
world, by no means flat, but round like a pomegranate, so that we
went—so to say—either up hill or down hill all the time.’
“That I think, was very singular,” interrupted the king.
“Nevertheless, it is quite true,” replied Scheherazade.
“I have my doubts,” rejoined the king; “but, pray, be so good as
to go on with the story.”
“I will,” said the queen. “‘The beast,’ continued Sinbad to the
caliph, ‘swam, as I have related, up hill and down hill until, at
length, we arrived at an island, many hundreds of miles in
circumference, but which, nevertheless, had been built in the
middle of the sea by a colony of little things like
caterpillars.’” (*1)
“Hum!” said the king.
“‘Leaving this island,’ said Sinbad—(for Scheherazade, it must be
understood, took no notice of her husband’s ill-mannered
ejaculation) ‘leaving this island, we came to another where the
forests were of solid stone, and so hard that they shivered to
pieces the finest-tempered axes with which we endeavoured to cut
them down.’” (*2)
“Hum!” said the king, again; but Scheherazade, paying him no
attention, continued in the language of Sinbad.
“‘Passing beyond this last island, we reached a country where
there was a cave that ran to the distance of thirty or forty
miles within the bowels of the earth, and that contained a
greater number of far more spacious and more magnificent palaces
than are to be found in all Damascus and Bagdad. From the roofs
of these palaces there hung myriads of gems, like diamonds, but
larger than men; and in among the streets of towers and pyramids
and temples, there flowed immense rivers as black as ebony, and
swarming with fish that had no eyes.’” (*3)
“Hum!” said the king.
“‘We then swam into a region of the sea where we found a lofty
mountain, down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted
metal, some of which were twelve miles wide and sixty miles long
(*4); while from an abyss on the summit, issued so vast a
quantity of ashes that the sun was entirely blotted out from the
heavens, and it became darker than the darkest midnight; so that
when we were even at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles
from the mountain, it was impossible to see the whitest object,
however close we held it to our eyes.’” (*5)
“Hum!” said the king.
“‘After quitting this coast, the beast continued his voyage until
we met with a land in which the nature of things seemed
reversed—for we here saw a great lake, at the bottom of which,
more than a hundred feet beneath the surface of the water, there
flourished in full leaf a forest of tall and luxuriant trees.’”
(*6)
“Hoo!” said the king.
“Some hundred miles farther on brought us to a climate where the
atmosphere was so dense as to sustain iron or steel, just as our
own does feather.’” (*7)
“Fiddle de dee,” said the king.
“Proceeding still in the same direction, we presently arrived at
the most magnificent region in the whole world. Through it there
meandered a glorious river for several thousands of miles. This
river was of unspeakable depth, and of a transparency richer than
that of amber. It was from three to six miles in width; and its
banks which arose on either side to twelve hundred feet in
perpendicular height, were crowned with ever-blossoming trees and
perpetual sweet-scented flowers, that made the whole territory
one gorgeous garden; but the name of this luxuriant land was the
Kingdom of Horror, and to enter it was inevitable death.’” (*8)
“Humph!” said the king.
“‘We left this kingdom in great haste, and, after some days, came
to another, where we were astonished to perceive myriads of
monstrous animals with horns resembling scythes upon their heads.
These hideous beasts dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil,
of a funnel shape, and line the sides of them with rocks, so
disposed one upon the other that they fall instantly, when
trodden upon by other animals, thus precipitating them into the
monster’s dens, where their blood is immediately sucked, and
their carcasses afterwards hurled contemptuously out to an
immense distance from “the caverns of death."’” (*9)
“Pooh!” said the king.
“‘Continuing our progress, we perceived a district with
vegetables that grew not upon any soil but in the air. (*10)
There were others that sprang from the substance of other
vegetables; (*11) others that derived their substance from the
bodies of living animals; (*12) and then again, there were others
that glowed all over with intense fire; (*13) others that moved
from place to place at pleasure, (*14) and what was still more
wonderful, we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and
moved their limbs at will and had, moreover, the detestable
passion of mankind for enslaving other creatures, and confining
them in horrid and solitary prisons until the fulfillment of
appointed tasks.’” (*15)
“Pshaw!” said the king.
“‘Quitting this land, we soon arrived at another in which the
bees and the birds are mathematicians of such genius and
erudition, that they give daily instructions in the science of
geometry to the wise men of the empire. The king of the place
having offered a reward for the solution of two very difficult
problems, they were solved upon the spot—the one by the bees, and
the other by the birds; but the king keeping their solution a
secret, it was only after the most profound researches and labor,
and the writing of an infinity of big books, during a long series
of years, that the men-mathematicians at length arrived at the
identical solutions which had been given upon the spot by the
bees and by the birds.’” (*16)
“Oh my!” said the king.
“‘We had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found
ourselves close upon another, from whose shores there flew over
our heads a flock of fowls a mile in breadth, and two hundred and
forty miles long; so that, although they flew a mile during every
minute, it required no less than four hours for the whole flock
to pass over us—in which there were several millions of millions
of fowl.’” (*17)
“Oh fy!” said the king.
“‘No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us
great annoyance, than we were terrified by the appearance of a
fowl of another kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs
which I met in my former voyages; for it was bigger than the
biggest of the domes on your seraglio, oh, most Munificent of
Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head that we could perceive,
but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was of a prodigious
fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance, smooth,
shining and striped with various colors. In its talons, the
monster was bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house
from which it had knocked off the roof, and in the interior of
which we distinctly saw human beings, who, beyond doubt, were in
a state of frightful despair at the horrible fate which awaited
them. We shouted with all our might, in the hope of frightening
the bird into letting go of its prey, but it merely gave a snort
or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon our heads a heavy
sack which proved to be filled with sand!’”
“Stuff!” said the king.
“‘It was just after this adventure that we encountered a
continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which,
nevertheless, was supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue
cow that had no fewer than four hundred horns.’” (*18)
“That, now, I believe,” said the king, “because I have read
something of the kind before, in a book.”
“‘We passed immediately beneath this continent, (swimming in
between the legs of the cow), and, after some hours, found
ourselves in a wonderful country indeed, which, I was informed by
the man-animal, was his own native land, inhabited by things of
his own species. This elevated the man-animal very much in my
esteem, and in fact, I now began to feel ashamed of the
contemptuous familiarity with which I had treated him; for I
found that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most
powerful magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, (*19)
which, no doubt, served to stimulate them by their painful
writhings and wrigglings to the most miraculous efforts of
imagination!’”
“Nonsense!” said the king.
“‘Among the magicians, were domesticated several animals of very
singular kinds; for example, there was a huge horse whose bones
were iron and whose blood was boiling water. In place of corn, he
had black stones for his usual food; and yet, in spite of so hard
a diet, he was so strong and swift that he would drag a load more
weighty than the grandest temple in this city, at a rate
surpassing that of the flight of most birds.’” (*20)
“Twattle!” said the king.
“‘I saw, also, among these people a hen without feathers, but
bigger than a camel; instead of flesh and bone she had iron and
brick; her blood, like that of the horse, (to whom, in fact, she
was nearly related,) was boiling water; and like him she ate
nothing but wood or black stones. This hen brought forth very
frequently, a hundred chickens in the day; and, after birth, they
took up their residence for several weeks within the stomach of
their mother.’” (*21)
“Fal lal!” said the king.
“‘One of this nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of
brass and wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity
that he would have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with
the exception of the great Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. (*22)
Another of these magi constructed (of like material) a creature
that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so
great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed
calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required
the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year. (*23)
But a still more wonderful conjuror fashioned for himself a
mighty thing that was neither man nor beast, but which had brains
of lead, intermixed with a black matter like pitch, and fingers
that it employed with such incredible speed and dexterity that it
would have had no trouble in writing out twenty thousand copies
of the Koran in an hour, and this with so exquisite a precision,
that in all the copies there should not be found one to vary from
another by the breadth of the finest hair. This thing was of
prodigious strength, so that it erected or overthrew the
mightiest empires at a breath; but its powers were exercised
equally for evil and for good.’”
“Ridiculous!” said the king.
“‘Among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in
his veins the blood of the salamanders; for he made no scruple of
sitting down to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his
dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its floor. (*24) Another had
the faculty of converting the common metals into gold, without
even looking at them during the process. (*25) Another had such a
delicacy of touch that he made a wire so fine as to be invisible.
(*26) Another had such quickness of perception that he counted
all the separate motions of an elastic body, while it was
springing backward and forward at the rate of nine hundred
millions of times in a second.’” (*27)
“Absurd!” said the king.
“‘Another of these magicians, by means of a fluid that nobody
ever yet saw, could make the corpses of his friends brandish
their arms, kick out their legs, fight, or even get up and dance
at his will. (*28) Another had cultivated his voice to so great
an extent that he could have made himself heard from one end of
the world to the other. (*29) Another had so long an arm that he
could sit down in Damascus and indite a letter at Bagdad—or
indeed at any distance whatsoever. (*30) Another commanded the
lightning to come down to him out of the heavens, and it came at
his call; and served him for a plaything when it came. Another
took two loud sounds and out of them made a silence. Another
constructed a deep darkness out of two brilliant lights. (*31)
Another made ice in a red-hot furnace. (*32) Another directed the
sun to paint his portrait, and the sun did. (*33) Another took
this luminary with the moon and the planets, and having first
weighed them with scrupulous accuracy, probed into their depths
and found out the solidity of the substance of which they were
made. But the whole nation is, indeed, of so surprising a
necromantic ability, that not even their infants, nor their
commonest cats and dogs have any difficulty in seeing objects
that do not exist at all, or that for twenty millions of years
before the birth of the nation itself had been blotted out from
the face of creation.’” (*34)
“Preposterous!” said the king.
“‘The wives and daughters of these incomparably great and wise
magi,’” continued Scheherazade, without being in any manner
disturbed by these frequent and most ungentlemanly interruptions
on the part of her husband—“‘the wives and daughters of these
eminent conjurers are every thing that is accomplished and
refined; and would be every thing that is interesting and
beautiful, but for an unhappy fatality that besets them, and from
which not even the miraculous powers of their husbands and
fathers has, hitherto, been adequate to save. Some fatalities
come in certain shapes, and some in others—but this of which I
speak has come in the shape of a crotchet.’”
“A what?” said the king.
“‘A crotchet’” said Scheherazade. “‘One of the evil genii, who
are perpetually upon the watch to inflict ill, has put it into
the heads of these accomplished ladies that the thing which we
describe as personal beauty consists altogether in the
protuberance of the region which lies not very far below the
small of the back. Perfection of loveliness, they say, is in the
direct ratio of the extent of this lump. Having been long
possessed of this idea, and bolsters being cheap in that country,
the days have long gone by since it was possible to distinguish a
woman from a dromedary—’”
“Stop!” said the king—“I can’t stand that, and I won’t. You have
already given me a dreadful headache with your lies. The day,
too, I perceive, is beginning to break. How long have we been
married?—my conscience is getting to be troublesome again. And
then that dromedary touch—do you take me for a fool? Upon the
whole, you might as well get up and be throttled.”
These words, as I learn from the “Isitsöornot,” both grieved and
astonished Scheherazade; but, as she knew the king to be a man of
scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to forfeit his word, she
submitted to her fate with a good grace. She derived, however,
great consolation, (during the tightening of the bowstring,) from
the reflection that much of the history remained still untold,
and that the petulance of her brute of a husband had reaped for
him a most righteous reward, in depriving him of many
inconceivable adventures.