Mardi: Chapter 80

Chapter 80

Donjalolo In The Bosom Of His Family

To pretend to relate the manner in which Juam's ruler passed his
captive days, without making suitable mention of his harem, would be
to paint one's full-length likeness and omit the face. For it was his
harem that did much to stamp the character of Donjalolo.

And had he possessed but a single spouse, most discourteous, surely,
to have overlooked the princess; much more, then, as it is; and by
how-much the more, a plurality exceeds a unit.

Exclusive of the female attendants, by day waiting upon the person of
the king, he had wives thirty in number, corresponding in name to the
nights of the moon. For, in Juam, time is not reckoned by days, but
by nights; each night of the lunar month having its own designation;
which, relatively only, is extended to the day.

In uniform succession, the thirty wives ruled queen of the king's
heart. An arrangement most wise and judicious; precluding much of
that jealousy and confusion prevalent in ill-regulated seraglios. For
as thirty spouses must be either more desirable, or less desirable
than one; so is a harem thirty times more difficult to manage than an
establishment with one solitary mistress. But Donjalolo's wives were
so nicely drilled, that for the most part, things went on very
smoothly. Nor were his brows much furrowed with wrinkles referable to
domestic cares and tribulations. Although, as in due time will be
seen, from these he was not altogether exempt.

Now, according to Braid-Beard, who, among other abstruse political
researches, had accurately informed himself concerning the internal
administration of Donjalolo's harem, the following was the method
pursued therein.

On the Aquella, or First Night of the month, the queen of that name
assumes her diadem, and reigns. So too with Azzolino the Second, and
Velluvi the Third Night of the Moon; and so on, even unto the utter
eclipse thereof; through Calends, Nones, and Ides.

For convenience, the king is furnished with a card, whereon are
copied the various ciphers upon the arms of his queens; and parallel
thereto, the hieroglyphics significant of the corresponding Nights of
the month. Glancing over this, Donjalolo predicts the true time of
the rising and setting of all his stars.

This Moon of wives was lodged in two spacious seraglios, which few
mortals beheld. For, so deeply were they buried in a grove; so
overpowered with verdure; so overrun with vines; and so hazy with the
incense of flowers; that they were almost invisible, unless closely
approached. Certain it was, that it demanded no small enterprise,
diligence, and sagacity, to explore the mysterious wood in search of
them. Though a strange, sweet, humming sound, as of the clustering
and swarming of warm bees among roses, at last hinted the royal honey
at hand. High in air, toward the summit of the cliff, overlooking
this side of the glen, a narrow ledge of rocks might have been seen,
from which, rumor whispered, was to be caught an angular peep at the
tip of the apex of the roof of the nearest seraglio. But this wild
report had never been established. Nor, indeed, was it susceptible of
a test. For was not that rock inaccessible as the eyrie of young
eagles? But to guard against the possibility of any visual
profanation, Donjalolo had authorized an edict, forever tabooing that
rock to foot of man or pinion of fowl. Birds and bipeds both trembled
and obeyed; taking a wide circuit to avoid the spot.

Access to the seraglios was had by corresponding arbors leading from
the palace. The seraglio to the right was denominated "Ravi"
(Before), that to the left "Zono" (After). The meaning of which was,
that upon the termination of her reign the queen wended her way to
the Zono; there tarrying with her predecessors till the Ravi was
emptied; when the entire Moon of wives, swallow-like, migrated back
whence they came; and the procession was gone over again.

In due order, the queens reposed upon mats inwoven with their
respective ciphers. In the Ravi, the mat of the queen-apparent, or
next in succession, was spread by the portal. In the Zono, the newly-
widowed queen reposed furthest from it.

But alas for all method where thirty wives are concerned.
Notwithstanding these excellent arrangements, the mature result of
ages of progressive improvement in the economy of the royal seraglios
in Willamilla, it must needs be related, that at times the order of
precedence became confused, and was very hard to restore.

At intervals, some one of the wives was weeded out, to the no small
delight of the remainder; but to their equal vexation her place would
soon after be supplied by some beautiful stranger; who assuming the
denomination of the vacated Night of the Moon, thenceforth commenced
her monthly revolutions in the king's infallible calendar.

In constant attendance, was a band of old men; woe-begone, thin of
leg, and puny of frame; whose grateful task it was, to tarry in the
garden of Donjalolo's delights, without ever touching the roses.
Along with innumerable other duties, they were perpetually kept
coming and going upon ten thousand errands; for they had it in strict
charge to obey the slightest behests of the damsels; and with all
imaginable expedition to run, fly, swim, or dissolve into impalpable
air, at the shortest possible notice.

So laborious their avocations, that none could discharge them
for more than a twelvemonth, at the end of that period giving up the
ghost out of pure exhaustion of the locomotive apparatus. It was this
constant drain upon the stock of masculine old age in the glen, that
so bethinned its small population of gray-beards and hoary-heads. And
any old man hitherto exempted, who happened to receive a summons to
repair to the palace, and there wait the pleasure of the king: this
unfortunate, at once suspecting his doom, put his arbor in order;
oiled and suppled his joints; took a long farewell of his friends;
selected his burial-place; and going resigned to his fate, in due
time expired like the rest.

Had any one of them cast about for some alleviating circumstance, he
might possibly have derived some little consolation from the thought,
that though a slave to the whims of thirty princesses, he was
nevertheless one of their guardians, and as such, he might
ingeniously have concluded, their superior. But small consolation
this. For the damsels were as blithe as larks, more playful than
kittens; never looking sad and sentimental, projecting clandestine
escapes. But supplied with the thirtieth part of all that Aspasia
could desire; glorying in being the spouses of a king; nor in the
remotest degree anxious about eventual dowers; they were care-free,
content, and rejoicing, as the rays of the morning.

Poor old men, then; it would be hard to distill out of your fate, one
drop of the balm of consolation. For, commissioned to watch over
those who forever kept you on the trot, affording you no time to hunt
up peccadilloes; was not this circumstance an aggravation of hard
times? a sharpening and edge-giving to the steel in your souls?

But much yet remains unsaid.

To dwell no more upon the eternal wear-and-tear incident to these
attenuated old warders, they were intensely hated by the damsels.
Inasmuch, as it was archly opined, for what ulterior purposes they
were retained.

Nightly couching, on guard, round the seraglio, like fangless old
bronze dragons round a fountain enchanted, the old men ever and anon
cried out mightily, by reason of sore pinches and scratches received
in the dark: And tri-trebly-tri-triply girt about as he was,
Donjalolo himself started from his slumbers, raced round and round
through his ten thousand corridors; at last bursting all dizzy among
his twenty-nine queens, to see what under the seventh-heavens was the
matter. When, lo and behold! there lay the innocents all sound
asleep; the dragons moaning over their mysterious bruises.

Ah me! his harem, like all large families, was the delight and the
torment of the days and nights of Donjalolo.

And in one special matter was he either eminently miserable, or
otherwise: for all his multiplicity of wives, he had never an heir.
Not his, the proud paternal glance of the Grand Turk Solyman, looking
round upon a hundred sons, all bone of his bone, and squinting with
his squint.

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