Chapter 77 - Page 2

waving with fresh orange-boughs, among whose leaves, myriads of small
tapers gleamed like fire-flies in groves,--Abrazza's glorious board
showed like some banquet in Paradise: Ceres and Pomona presiding; and
jolly Bacchus, like a recruit with a mettlesome rifle, staggering back
as he fires off the bottles of vivacious champagne.

In ranges, roundabout stood living candelabras:--lackeys, gayly
bedecked, with tall torches in their hands; and at one end, stood
trumpeters, bugles at their lips.

"This way, my dear Media!--this seat at my left--Noble Taji!--my
right. Babbalanja!--Mohi--where you are. But where's pretty Yoomy?--
Gone to meditate in the moonlight? ah!--Very good. Let the
banquet begin. A blast there!"

And charge all did.

The venison, wild boar's meat, and buffalo-humps, were extraordinary;
the wine, of rare vintages, like bottled lightning; and the first
course, a brilliant affair, went off like a rocket.

But as yet, Babbalanja joined not in the revels. His mood was on him;
and apart he sat; silently eyeing the banquet; and ever and anon
muttering,--"Fogle-foggle, fugle-fi.--"

The first fury of the feast over, said King Media, pouring out from a
heavy flagon into his goblet, "Abrazza, these suppers are wondrous
fine things."

"Ay, my dear lord, much better than dinners."

"So they are, so they are. The dinner-hour is the summer of the day:
full of sunshine, I grant; but not like the mellow autumn of supper. A
dinner, you know, may go off rather stiffly; but invariably suppers
are jovial. At dinners, 'tis not till you take in sail, furl the
cloth, bow the lady-passengers out, and make all snug; 'tis not till
then, that one begins to ride out the gale with complacency. But at
these suppers--Good Oro! your cup is empty, my dear demi-god!--But at
these suppers, I say, all is snug and ship-shape before you begin; and
when you begin, you waive the beginning, and begin in the middle. And
as for the cloth,--but tell us, Braid-Beard, what that old king of
Franko, Ludwig the Fat, said of that matter. The cloth for suppers,
you know. It's down in your chronicles."

"My lord,"--wiping his beard,--"Old Ludwig was of opinion, that at
suppers the cloth was superfluous, unless on the back of some jolly
good friar. Said he, 'For one, I prefer sitting right down to the
unrobed table.'"

"High and royal authority, that of Ludwig the Fat," said Babbalanja,
"far higher than the authority of Ludwig the Great:--the one, only
great by courtesy; the other, fat beyond a peradventure. But
they are equally famous; and in their graves, both on a par. For after
devouring many a fair