Mardi: Chapter 95

Chapter 95

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-fiend 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.

Back to chapter list of: Mardi