1826. ] Haroun, the Lonely Man of Shiraz. 177 
with their work as if nothing had happened to their late lord and 
master. The children were at their sports when they were informed of 
‘their father’s death; they whooped and gambolled, and continued their 
race after the blue-winged natives of Kashmeer just as before the 
melancholy tidings, and seemed nothing moved, unless their emotion 
was expressed in their riotous rollings over the grass and over one another. 
«I have four of the most tender-hearted wives in Shiraz, and forty of 
the most filial children that ever blessed a man who was not their father! 
But whatever is was to be, I suppose, and though nothing is as it should 
be, there are many things which might be worse than they are. I 
must be content, and squeeze as much honey out of my lemons as I 
can,” sighed the disconsolate Haroun, as he motioned the officers to 
withdraw: they obeyed, and he was left to his own solitary reflections. 
« Well,” mused he, ‘“ with the diamonds I have secreted about me, 
and the hundred pieces I am promised, the husband of the four wives 
and the forty children of a robber is at any rate richer than the single 
basket-maker with no pieces and diamonds. As I am in the pit, I must 
live in it; so my wives, do you hear, jades, prepare a bath and a bed 
for your new lord and master, and I will love you as much as the old one 
to-morrow.” ‘ Ah, my lord,” sighed the four wives with one voice, as 
if by concert—“* My lord!” humphed Haroun, swelling at the title; 
«come, this is an improvement on the poor knave the basket-maker of 
yesterday !”—* My lord,” continued the women, “if you love us no 
more than our late lord, we should be happier to remain disconsolate 
widows, for he was old.” « Well, well,” said Haroun, “enough for 
to-morrow is the evil of to-morrow. There, bid the thirty boys, m 
sons, to cease shouting, and the ten girls, my daughters, to hold their 
prattling, that the stranger their father may sleep. But well remem- 
bered, sweet wives—I am hungry as well as weary: what, now, have 
you for supper ? for I will not wink till Iam fed.” One of the women 
left the chamber, and in a moment returned with a large silver dish, 
holding, as its contents, a boiled chicken, lying inisled, as. it were, 
in a small ocean of the milk of goats thickened with the whitest of rice. 
“«. That is a dish fit for the cousin of the sun!” exclaimed the delighted 
Haroun, rubbing his hands with satisfaction, and smacking his lips with 
expectation. His fingers were in the dish in a moment, and in another 
the tenderly-boiled fowl was amputated limb from limb. “ By the mouth 
of Mahomet,” said he, chuckling and choking with hungry haste and 
enjoyment of his savoury meal, “I cannot help thinking how the old 
rascal, your late husband of this morning, hoped to have relished this: 
fine fowl for his supper to-night! and now he is where he cannnot eat— 
and may be eaten, for I'll be sworn the fishes are already nibbling at his 
nose, which was a taking bait for a prince among the fishes, it was so 
rosy and well fed.” As he uttered this conceit he threw himself back- 
wards on his pillows with a fowl-bone in his mouth, half-choking with 
that and his laughter. It was the first time he had laughed for many a 
moon ; and he stretched his sides now till he was glad to hoop them in 
with equal hands, whilst his lungs crowed like a cock’s. The wives 
affected to be hurt at his levity, and looked as disconsolate as widows 
ever appear to be. “And how the old ruffian roared,” continued. 
Haroun, “ to be saved from drowning! You would have thought he had 
been the most honest and worthy fellow in Shiraz, instead of being the 
greatest rascal in it—except the Cadi. Had I been in his place in the river, 
M.M. New Series —Vot. Il. No. 8. 2A 
