While he was surveying the private lodge of the Senator Hippomanes, Mirzoza waited for him in the rose-colour’d salon, with the youthful Zaide, the cheerful Leocris, the lively Serica, Amina and Benzaira, the wives of two Emirs, Orphisa the prude, and Vetula the great Seneschal’s lady, temporal mother of all the Bramins. It was not long before he appeared. He enter’d attended by count Hannetillon and the chevalier Fadaes. Alciphenor an old rake, and his disciple young Marmolin followed him; and two minutes after, arrived the Pacha Grifgrif, the Aga Fortimbek, and the Selictar Velvet-Paw. These were the most absolute Petits-Maîtres of the court. Mangogul call’d them together designedly. Having heard a thousand stories of their gallant exploits, he resolved to be informed in such a manner as might banish all future doubt. “Well, gentlemen,” says he to them, “ye whom nothing escapes, that passes in the empire of gallantry, what news from thence? how far are the Speaking Toys got.”
“Sir,” replied Alciphenor, “the racket they make increases daily; and if it continues, we shall soon not be able to hear ourselves. But nothing is so diverting as the indiscretion of Zobeida’s Toy. It has given her husband a catalogue of her adventures.”
“And a prodigious one,” says Marmolin: “it mentions five agas, twenty captains, almost an entire company of janissaries, twelve Bramins: and they say that I am named too, but that is a mere joke.”
“The best past of the affair is,” added Grifgrif, “that the affrighted husband ran away with his fingers in his ears.”
“This is quite horrible,” said Mirzoza.
“Yes, madam,” interrupted Fortimbek, “horrible, frightful, execrable.”
“More than all that, if you please,” replied the favorite, “to dishonor a woman upon hearsay.”
“Madam, it is literally true, Marmolin has not added one word to the story,” says Velvet-Paw.
“It is fact,” says Grifgrif.
“Good,” says Hannetillon, “there is an epigram already handed about concerning it, and an epigram is not made for nothing.”
“But why should Marmolin be safe from the prattle of the Toys? Cynara’s Toy has insisted on speaking in its turn, and to blend me with people, who do not stake their all. But how to help that? The right thing is not, to be disturbed at it,” says Velvet-Paw.
“You are right,” answered Hannetillon, and instantly fell to singing:
Mon bonheur fut si grand, que j’ai peine à le croire.2
“Count,” says Mangogul to Hannetillon, “then you have been particularly acquainted with Cynara?”
“Sir,” answered Velvet-Paw, “who doubts it? He has walk’d with her for more moons than one? they have been song’d; and all this would have lasted to this day, if he had not at length discovered that she was not handsome, and that she had a large mouth.”
“Allowed,” replied Hannetillon; “but that imperfection was ballanced by an uncommon agreeableness.”
“How long since this adventure?” ask’d the prude Orphisa.
“Madam,” replied Hannetillon, “its epoch is not present to my memory. I must have recourse to the chronological tables of my good fortune. There may be seen the day and minute: but ’tis a large volume, with which my servants amuse themselves in the antechamber.”
“Hold,” says Alciphenor; “I recollect that it was precisely a year after Grifgrif fell out with Madam la Seneschale. She has the memory of an angel, and can tell you exactly.”
“That nothing is more false than your date,” answered the Seneschal’s lady gravely. “ ’Tis well known that blockheads were never of my taste.”
“Yet, madam,” replied Alciphenor, “you will never persuade us, that Marmolin was excessively wise, when he was conducted into your apartment by the back stairs, whenever his highness summoned the Seneschal to council.”
“There can be no greater extravagance in my opinion,” added Velvet-Paw, “than to enter into a woman’s chamber by stealth, for nothing at all; for people thought nothing more of his visits than what was really fact, and madam was already in full enjoyment of that reputation of virtue, which she has so well supported since that time.”
“But that is an age ago,” says Fadaes. “It was pretty much about that same time that Zulica made a slip from the Selictar, who was her humble servant, to take possession of Grifgrif, whom she drop’d six months after; she is now got as far as Fortimbek. I am not sorry for my friend’s little stroke of good luck; I see her, I admire her, but entirely without any pretensions.”
“Yet Zulica,” says the favorite, “is very amiable. She has wit, taste, and something, I know not how, engaging in her countenance, which I should prefer to charms.”
“I grant that, madam,” answer’d Fadaes: “but she is maigre, has no neck, and her thigh is so skinny, that it raises one’s pity.”
“You are well acquainted with it, to be sure,” added the Sultana.
“Oh! madam,” replied Hannetillon, “you may guess that. I have visited Zulica but seldom, and yet I know as much of that affair as Fadaes.”
“I can easily believe you,” says the favorite.
“But apropos, might one ask Grifgrif,” says the Selictar, “if he has been long in
