First in the hearts of his countrymen.'
'Get out!' roared the King.
'Your Majesty?' quavered the leader of the minstrels.
'Make a noise like an egg and beat it!' (Again one finds the
chronicler's idiom impossible to reproduce in modern speech, and must
be content with a literal translation.) 'By the bones of my ancestors,
it's a little hard! By the beard of the sacred goat, it's tough! What
in the name of Belus and Hec do you mean, you yowling misfits, by
starting that sort of stuff when a man's swinging? I was just shaping
to hit it right that time when you butted in, you----'
The minstrels melted away. The bearded man patted the fermenting
monarch paternally on the shoulder.
'Ma mannie,' he said, 'ye may no' be a gowfer yet, but hoots! ye're
learning the language fine!'
King Merolchazzar's fury died away. He simpered modestly at these words
of commendation, the first his bearded preceptor had uttered. With
exemplary patience he turned to address the stone for the
twenty-seventh time.
That night it was all over the city that the King had gone crazy over a
new religion, and the orthodox shook their heads.
* * * * *
We of the present day, living in the midst of a million marvels of a
complex civilization, have learned to adjust ourselves to conditions
and to take for granted phenomena which in an earlier and less advanced
age would have caused the profoundest excitement and even alarm. We
accept without comment the telephone, the automobile, and the wireless
telegraph, and we are unmoved by the spectacle of our fellow human
beings in the grip of the first stages of golf fever. Far otherwise was
it with the courtiers and officials about the Palace of Oom. The
obsession of the King was the sole topic of conversation.
Every day now, starting forth at dawn and returning only with the
falling of darkness, Merolchazzar was out on the Linx, as the outdoor
temple of the new god was called. In a luxurious house adjoining this
expanse the bearded Scotsman had been installed, and there he could be
found at almost any hour of the day fashioning out of holy wood the
weird implements indispensable to the new religion. As a recognition of
his services, the King had bestowed upon him a large pension,
innumerable kaddiz or slaves, and the title of Promoter of the
King's Happiness, which for the sake of convenience was generally
shortened to The Pro.
At present, Oom being a conservative country, the worship of the new
god had not attracted the public in great numbers. In fact, except for
the Grand Vizier, who, always a faithful follower of his sovereign's
fortunes, had taken to Gowf from the start, the courtiers held aloof to
a man. But the Vizier had thrown himself into the new worship with such
vigour and earnestness that it was not long before he won from the King
the title of Supreme Splendiferous Maintainer of the Twenty-Four
Handicap Except on Windy Days when It Goes Up to Thirty--a title which
in ordinary conversation was usually abbreviated to The Dub.
