95. CHAPTER XCV.
THAT JOLLY OLD LORD BORABOLLA LAUGHS ON BOTH SIDES
OF HIS FACE.
“A very good palace, this, coz, for you and me,” said
waddling old Borabolla to Media, as, returned from our
excursion, he slowly lowered himself down to his mat, sighing
like a grampus.
By this, he again made known the vastness of his hospitality,
which led him for the nonce to parcel out his kingdom
with his guests.
But apart from these extravagant expressions of good
feeling, Borabolla was the prince of good fellows. His
great tun of a person was indispensable to the housing of
his bullock-heart; under which, any lean wight would have
sunk. But alas! unlike Media and Taji, Borabolla, though
a crowned king, was accounted no demi-god; his obesity
excluding him from that honor. Indeed, in some quarters
of Mardi, certain pagans maintain, that no fat man can be
even immortal. A dogma! truly, which should be thrown
to the dogs. For fat men are the salt and savor of the
earth; full of good humor, high spirits, fun, and all manner
of jollity. Their breath clears the atmosphere: their exhalations
air the world. Of men, they are the good measures;
brimmed, heaped, pressed down, piled up, and running
over. They are as ships from Teneriffe; swimming deep,
full of old wine, and twenty steps down into their holds.
Soft and susceptible, all round they are easy of entreaty.
Wherefore, for all their rotundity, they are too often circumnavigated
by hatchet-faced knaves. Ah! a fat uncle, with
a fat paunch, and a fat purse, is a joy and a delight to all
nephews; to philosophers, a subject of endless speculation,
as to how many droves of oxen and Lake Eries of wine
might have run through his great mill during the full term
of his mortal career. Fat men not immortal! This
very instant, old Lambert is rubbing his jolly abdomen in
Paradise.
Now, to the fact of his not being rated a demi-god, was
perhaps ascribable the circumstance, that Borabolla comported
himself with less dignity, than was the wont of their
Mardian majesties. And truth to say, to have seen him
regaling himself with one of his favorite cuttle-fish, its long
snaky arms and feelers instinctively twining round his head
as he ate; few intelligent observers would have opined that
the individual before them was the sovereign lord of Mondoldo.
But what of the banquet of fish? Shall we tell how
the old king ungirdled himself thereto; how as the feast
waxed toward its close, with one sad exception, he still remained
sunny-sided all round; his disc of a face joyous as
the South Side of Madeira in the hilarious season of
grapes? Shall we tell how we all grew glad and frank;
and how the din of the dinner was heard far into night?
We will.
When Media ate slowly, Borabolla took him to task,
bidding him dispatch his viands more speedily.
Whereupon said Media “But Borabolla, my round fellow,
that would abridge the pleasure.”
“Not at all, my dear demi-god; do like me: eat fast
and eat long.”
In the middle of the feast, a huge skin of wine was
brought in. The portly peltry of a goat; its horns embattling
its effigy head; its mouth the nozzle; and its long
beard flowed to its jet-black hoofs. With many ceremonial
salams, the attendants bore it along, placing it at one end
of the convivial mats, full in front of Borabolla; where
seated upon its haunches it made one of the party.
Brimming a ram's horn, the mellowest of bugles, Borabolla
bowed to his silent guest, and thus spoke—“In this
wine, which yet smells of the grape, I pledge you my reverend
old toper, my lord Capricornus; you alone have enough;
and here's full skins to the rest!”
“How jolly he is,” whispered Media to Babbalanja.
“Ay, his lungs laugh loud; but is laughing, rejoicing?”
“Help! help!” cried Borabolla “lay me down! lay me
down! good gods, what a twinge!”
The goblet fell from his hand; the purple flew from his
wine to his face; and Borabolla fell back into the arms of
his servitors. “That gout! that gout!” he groaned.
“Lord! lord! no more cursed wine will I drink!”
“Then at ten paces distant, a clumsy attendant let fall a
trencher—“Take it off my foot, you knave!”
Afar off another entered gallanting a calabash—“Look
out for my toe, you hound!”
During all this, the attendants tenderly nursed him.
And in good time, with its thousand fangs, the gout-frend
departed for a while.
Reprieved, the old king brightened up; by degrees becoming
jolly as ever.
“Come! let us be merry again,” he cried, “what shall
we eat? and what shall we drink? that infernal gout is
gone; come, what will your worships have?”
So at it once more we went.
But of our feast, little more remains to be related than
this;—that out of it, grew a wondrous kindness between
Borabolla and Jarl. Strange to tell, from the first our fat
host had regarded my Viking with a most friendly eye.
Still stranger to add, this feeling was returned. But though
they thus fancied each other, they were very unlike; Borabolla
and Jarl. Nevertheless, thus is it ever. And as the
convex fits not into the convex, but into the concave; so do
men fit into their opposites; and so fitted Borabolla's arched
paunch into Jarl's, hollowed out to receive it.
But how now? Borabolla was jolly and loud: Jarl
demure and silent; Borabolla a king: Jarl only a Viking;
—how came they together? Very plain, to repeat:—because
they were heterogeneous; and hence the affinity.
But as the affinity between those chemical opposites chlorine
and hydrogen, is promoted by caloric; so the affinity between
Borabolla and Jarl was promoted by the warmth of the
wine that they drank at this feast. For of all blessed fluids,
the juice of the grape is the greatest foe to cohesion. True,
it tightens the girdle; but then it loosens the tongue, and
opens the heart.
In sum, Borabolla loved Jarl; and Jarl, pleased with this
sociable monarch, for all his garrulity, esteemed him the
most sensible old gentleman and king he had as yet seen in
Mardi. For this reason, perhaps; that his talkativeness
favored that silence in listeners, which was my Viking's delight
in himself.
Repeatedly during the banquet, our host besought Taji
to allow his henchman to remain on the island, after the
rest of our party should depart; and he faithfully promised
to surrender Jarl, whenever we should return to claim him.
But though I harbored no distrust of Borabolla's friendly
intentions, I could not so readily consent to his request; for
with Jarl for my one only companion, had I not both famished
and feasted? was he not my only link to things
past?—
Things past!—Ah Yillah! for all its mirth, and though
we hunted wide, we found thee not in Mondoldo.
