Hieroglyphic Tales: A New Arabian Night's Entertainment

A New Arabian Night's Entertainment

Tale I

At the foot of the great mountain Hirgonq�u was anciently situated the
kingdom of Larbidel. Geographers, who are not apt to make such just
comparisons, said, it resembled a football just going to be kicked away;
and so it happened; for the mountain kicked the kingdom into the ocean,
and it has never been heard of since.

One day a young princess had climbed up to the top of the mountain to
gather goat's eggs, the whites of which are excellent for taking off
freckles.--Goat's eggs!--Yes--naturalists hold that all Beings are
conceived in an egg. The goats of Hirgonq�u might be oviparous, and lay
their eggs to be hatched by the sun. This is my supposition; no matter
whether I believe it myself or not. I will write against and abuse any
man that opposes my hypothesis. It would be fine indeed if learned men
were obliged to believe what they assert.

The other side of the mountain was inhabited by a nation of whom the
Larbidellians knew no more than the French nobility do of Great Britain,
which they think is an island that some how or other may be approached
by land. The princess had strayed into the confines of Cucurucu, when
she suddenly found herself seized by the guards of the prince that
reigned in that country. They told her in few words that she must be
conveyed to the capital and married to the giant their lord and emperor.
The giant, it seems, was fond of having a new wife every night, who was
to tell him a story that would last till morning, and then have her head
cut off--such odd ways have some folks of passing their wedding-nights!
The princess modestly asked, why their master loved such long stories?
The captain of the guard replied, his majesty did not sleep well--Well!
said she, and if he does not!--not but I believe I can tell as long
stories as any princess in Asia. Nay, I can repeat Leonidas by heart,
and your emperor must be wakeful indeed if he can hold out against that.

By this time they were arrived at the palace. To the great surprise of
the princess, the emperor, so far from being a giant, was but five feet
one inch in height; but being two inches taller than any of his
predecessors, the flattery of his courtiers had bestowed the name of
_giant_ on him; and he affected to look down upon any man above his own
stature. The princess was immediately undressed and put to bed, his
majesty being impatient to hear a new story.

Light of my eyes, said the emperor, what is your name? I call myself the
princess Gronovia, replied she; but my real appellation is the frow
Gronow. And what is the use of a name, said his majesty, but to be
called by it? And why do you pretend to be a princess, if you are not?
My turn is romantic, answered she, and I have ever had an ambition of
being the heroine of a novel. Now there are but two conditions that
entitle one to that rank; one must be a shepherdess or a princess. Well,
content yourself, said the giant, you will die an empress, without
being either the one or the other! But what sublime reason had you for
lengthening your name so unaccountably? It is a custom in my family,
said she: all my ancestors were learned men, who wrote about the Romans.
It sounded more classic, and gave a higher opinion of their literature,
to put a Latin termination to their names. All this is Japonese to me,
said the emperor; but your ancestors seem to have been a parcel of
mountebanks. Does one understand any thing the better for corrupting
one's name? Oh, said the princess, but it shewed taste too. There was
a time when in Italy the learned carried this still farther; and a man
with a large forehead, who was born on the fifth of January, called
himself Quintus Januarius Fronto. More and more absurd, said the
emperor. You seem to have a great deal of impertinent knowledge about a
great many impertinent people; but proceed in your story: whence came
you? Mynheer, said she, I was born in Holland--The deuce you was, said
the emperor, and where is that? It was no where, replied the princess,
spritelily, till my countrymen gained it from the sea--Indeed, moppet!
said his majesty; and pray who were your countrymen, before you had any
country? Your majesty asks a vey shrewd question, said she, which I
cannot resolve on a sudden; but I will step home to my library, and
consult five or six thousand volumes of modern history, an hundred or
two dictionaries, and an abridgment of geography in forty volumes in
folio, and be back in an instant. Not so fast, my life, said the
emperor, you must not rise till you go to execution; it is now one in
the morning, and you have not begun your story.

My great grandfather, continued the princess, was a Dutch merchant, who
passed many years in Japan--On what account? said the emperor. He went
thither to abjure his religion, said she, that he might get money enough
to return and defend it against Philip 2d. You are a pleasant family,
said the emperor; but though I love fables, I hate genealogies. I know
in all families, by their own account, there never was any thing but
good and great men from father to son; a sort of fiction that does not
at all amuse me. In my dominions there is no nobility but flattery.
Whoever flatters me best is created a great lord, and the titles I
confer are synonimous to their merits. There is Kiss-my-breech-Can, my
favourite; Adulation-Can, lord treasurer; Prerogative-Can, head of the
law; and Blasphemy-Can, high-priest. Whoever speaks truth, corrupts his
blood, and is ipso facto degraded. In Europe you allow a man to be noble
because one of his ancestors was a flatterer. But every thing
degenerates, the farther it is removed from its source. I will not hear
a word of any of your race before your father: what was he?

It was in the height of the contests about the bull unigenitus--I tell
you, interrupted the emperor, I will not be plagued with any more of
those people with Latin names: they were a parcel of coxcombs, and seem
to have infected you with their folly. I am sorry, replied Gronovia,
that your sublime highness is so little acquainted with the state of
Europe, as to take a papal ordinance for a person. Unigenitus is Latin
for the Jesuits--And who the devil are the Jesuits? said the giant.
You explain one nonsensical term by another, and wonder I am never the
wiser. Sir, said the princess, if you will permit me to give you a short
account of the troubles that have agitated Europe for these last two
hundred years, on the doctrines of grace, free-will, predestination,
reprobation, justification, &c. you will be more entertained, and will
believe less, than if I told your majesty a long story of fairies and
goblins. You are an eternal prater, said the emperor, and very
self-sufficient; but talk your fill, and upon what subject you like till
tomorrow morning; but I swear by the soul of the holy Jirigi, who rode
to heaven on the tail of a magpie, as soon as the clock strikes eight,
you are a dead woman. Well, who was the Jesuit Unigenitus?

The novel doctrines that had sprung up in Germany, said Gronovia, made
it necessary for the church to look about her. The disciples of
Loyola--Of whom? said the emperor, yawning--Ignatius Loyola, the founder
of the Jesuits, replied Gronovia, was--A writer of Roman history, I
suppose, interrupted the emperor: what the devil were the Romans to you,
that you trouble your head so much about them? The empire of Rome, and
the church of Rome, are two distinct things, said the princess; and yet,
as one may say, the one depends upon the other, as the new testament
does on the old. One destroyed the other, and yet pretends a right to
its inheritance. The temporalities of the church--What's o'clock, said
the emperor to the chief eunuch? it cannot sure be far from eight--this
woman has gossipped at least seven hours. Do you hear, my
tomorrow-night's wife shall be dumb--cut her tongue out before you bring
her to our bed. Madam, said the eunuch, his sublime highness, whose
erudition passes the lands of the sea, is too well acquainted with all
human sciences to require information. It is therefore that his exalted
wisdom prefers accounts of what never happened, to any relation either
in history or divinity--You lie, said the emperor; when I exclude truth,
I certainly do not mean to forbid divinity--How many divinities have
you in Europe, woman? The council of Trent, replied Gronovia, has
decided--the emperor began to snore--I mean, continued Gronovia, that
notwithstanding all father Paul has asserted, cardinal Palavicini
affirms that in the three first sessions of that council--the emperor
was now fast asleep, which the princess and the chief eunuch perceiving,
clapped several pillows upon his face, and held them there till he
expired. As soon as they were convinced he was dead, the princess,
putting on every mark of despair and concern, issued to the divan,
where she was immediately proclaimed empress. The emperor, it was given
out, had died of an hermorrhoidal cholic, but to shew her regard for his
memory, her imperial majesty declared she would strictly adhere to the
maxims by which he had governed. Accordingly she espoused a new husband
every night, but dispensed with their telling her stories, and was
graciously pleased also, upon their good behaviour, to remit the
subsequent execution. She sent presents to all the learned men in Asia;
and they in return did not fail to cry her up as a pattern of clemency,
wisdom, and virtue: and though the panegyrics of the learned are
generally as clumsy as they are fulsome, they ventured to allure her
that their writings would be as durable as brass, and that the memory of
her glorious reign would reach to the latest posterity.

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