Ef Oe ee ee 
1826. ] Haroun, the Lonely Man of Shiraz. 171 
fortune, and wisdom follows greatness: I am great now, and I shall be 
wise in due season—I can wait till I am served. But greatness cannot 
lie, or sit, or even put his head into low hovels without injury to his 
greatness ; it is therefore highly becoming that I should quit directly my 
wooden hut on the osier isle, and seek for a palace ready erected to 
deposit my greatness in, or else to command that one shall be erected 
fit and proper for my reception. In the mean time I shall be requested 
as a particular favour to take up my abode in the palace of the King ; 
and as I fully purpose not to be proud, and forgetful of my former 
poverty, I may, after some hesitation, consent, and shall merely require 
of him to retire to his hunting-court in the plains, till I have done with it. 
He will of course comply with this moderate and modest proof of the 
‘confidence he may safely entertain of my high regard for him, and 
I shall live splendidly and feed sumptuously at my leisure. My bread 
will be’served to me on platters of silver, my meats in dishes of 
gold, and my sherbet in vases and cups carved out of the onyx, and 
the jasper, and the chrysolite, and a hundred precious stones will enrich 
the brims. My slaves will fear my frown; I shall shew no feeling for 
them, for he who feels for a slave is a slave himself at heart. My 
women, of course, will all love me; they must be handsome, for I am 
handsome, I have every reason to think. I will not indulge incontinent 
appetites, therefore a hundred of the fairest of the fair of Georgia and 
Circassia shall content me; and, with the blessing of Alla, these will 
produce to my bed—say, two hundred sons and daughters, as the olive 
branches of my domestic happiness. The boys will become princes, from 
their extraordinary deserts, as generals, conquerors, and legislators ; and 
the European world, which is but a small part of the world after all, will 
tremble at the name of any one of the race of Aboulim: the girls will 
become empresses, queens, and princesses, from the beauty which they 
will inherit from their father and mothers: more monarchs, and those 
the mightiest of the mighty, will sigh for them than can possibly win 
them, for only the most imperial of emperors and kingly of kings will, 
of course, be successful in their ambitious pretensions to degrade the 
daughters of Aboulim to condescend to sit upon their thrones. The rest 
must wait with becoming resignation till Ihave begotten a hundred other 
daughters, when they may perhaps, but it is just as it may happen, be 
honoured in their turn, upon their betraying a proper sense of the high 
honour reserved for them. As for the rejected, they may either hang, 
drown, slay, or poison themselves, whichever is most convenient to them ; 
or, if they decline either of those deaths, and can still desire to live 
under the disgrace of my refusal, they have but to resign their several 
thrones, and the father of emperors, the begetter of kings, and the 
filler of thrones, will, in the munificence of his generosity, take care 
that their subjects shall not want sovereigns while there is one of the 
.sons of Haroun Aboulim the Sublime unprovided for. I shall live to 
witness all these exceedingly possible circumstances come to pass, and 
shall be the wonder, envy, and admiration of the world. My baskets 
(were they baskets, which I amused my idle hours in making? Yes, I 
think I recollect they were baskets!) my baskets, I say, will be sought 
after by the curious of all parts of the globe, who will prize them 
as highly as they deserve to be estimated, as the rarest and most curious 
of curiosities: nation will war with nation for the possession of one 
of them, and thousands, nay, millions of common lives will be consider- 
