Donjalolo In The Bosom Of His Family
To pretend to relate the manner in which Juam’s ruler passed his
captive days, without making suitable mention of his harem, would be to
paint one’s full-length likeness and omit the face. For it was his
harem that did much to stamp the character of Donjalolo.
And had he possessed but a single spouse, most discourteous, surely, to
have overlooked the princess; much more, then, as it is; and by
how-much the more, a plurality exceeds a unit.
Exclusive of the female attendants, by day waiting upon the person of
the king, he had wives thirty in number, corresponding in name to the
nights of the moon. For, in Juam, time is not reckoned by days, but by
nights; each night of the lunar month having its own designation;
which, relatively only, is extended to the day.
In uniform succession, the thirty wives ruled queen of the king’s
heart. An arrangement most wise and judicious; precluding much of that
jealousy and confusion prevalent in ill-regulated seraglios. For as
thirty spouses must be either more desirable, or less desirable than
one; so is a harem thirty times more difficult to manage than an
establishment with one solitary mistress. But Donjalolo’s wives were so
nicely drilled, that for the most part, things went on very smoothly.
Nor were his brows much furrowed with wrinkles referable to domestic
cares and tribulations. Although, as in due time will be seen, from
these he was not altogether exempt.
Now, according to Braid-Beard, who, among other abstruse political
researches, had accurately informed himself concerning the internal
administration of Donjalolo’s harem, the following was the method
pursued therein.
On the Aquella, or First Night of the month, the queen of that name
assumes her diadem, and reigns. So too with Azzolino the Second, and
Velluvi the Third Night of the Moon; and so on, even unto the utter
eclipse thereof; through Calends, Nones, and Ides.
For convenience, the king is furnished with a card, whereon are copied
the various ciphers upon the arms of his queens; and parallel thereto,
the hieroglyphics significant of the corresponding Nights of the month.
Glancing over this, Donjalolo predicts the true time of the rising and
setting of all his stars.
This Moon of wives was lodged in two spacious seraglios, which few
mortals beheld. For, so deeply were they buried in a grove; so
overpowered with verdure; so overrun with vines; and so hazy with the
incense of flowers; that they were almost invisible, unless closely
approached. Certain it was, that it demanded no small enterprise,
diligence, and sagacity, to explore the mysterious wood in search of
them. Though a strange, sweet, humming sound, as of the clustering and
swarming of warm bees among roses, at last hinted the royal honey at
hand. High in air, toward the summit of the cliff, overlooking this
side of the glen, a narrow ledge of rocks might have been seen, from
which, rumor whispered, was to be caught an angular peep at the tip of
the apex of the roof of the nearest seraglio. But this wild report had
never been established. Nor, indeed, was it susceptible of a test. For
was not that rock inaccessible as the eyrie of young eagles? But to
guard against the possibility of any visual profanation, Donjalolo had
authorized an edict, forever tabooing that rock to foot of man or
pinion of fowl. Birds and bipeds both trembled and obeyed; taking a
wide circuit to avoid the spot.
Access to the seraglios was had by corresponding arbors leading from
the palace. The seraglio to the right was denominated “Ravi” (Before),
that to the left “Zono” (After). The meaning of which was, that upon
the termination of her reign the queen wended her way to the Zono;
there tarrying with her predecessors till the Ravi was emptied; when
the entire Moon of wives, swallow-like, migrated back whence they came;
and the procession was gone over again.
In due order, the queens reposed upon mats inwoven with their
respective ciphers. In the Ravi, the mat of the queen-apparent, or next
in succession, was spread by the portal. In the Zono, the newly-
widowed queen reposed furthest from it.
But alas for all method where thirty wives are concerned.
Notwithstanding these excellent arrangements, the mature result of ages
of progressive improvement in the economy of the royal seraglios in
Willamilla, it must needs be related, that at times the order of
precedence became confused, and was very hard to restore.
At intervals, some one of the wives was weeded out, to the no small
delight of the remainder; but to their equal vexation her place would
soon after be supplied by some beautiful stranger; who assuming the
denomination of the vacated Night of the Moon, thenceforth commenced
her monthly revolutions in the king’s infallible calendar.
In constant attendance, was a band of old men; woe-begone, thin of leg,
and puny of frame; whose grateful task it was, to tarry in the garden
of Donjalolo’s delights, without ever touching the roses. Along with
innumerable other duties, they were perpetually kept coming and going
upon ten thousand errands; for they had it in strict charge to obey the
slightest behests of the damsels; and with all imaginable expedition to
run, fly, swim, or dissolve into impalpable air, at the shortest
possible notice.
So laborious their avocations, that none could discharge them for more
than a twelvemonth, at the end of that period giving up the ghost out
of pure exhaustion of the locomotive apparatus. It was this constant
drain upon the stock of masculine old age in the glen, that so
bethinned its small population of gray-beards and hoary-heads. And any
old man hitherto exempted, who happened to receive a summons to repair
to the palace, and there wait the pleasure of the king: this
unfortunate, at once suspecting his doom, put his arbor in order; oiled
and suppled his joints; took a long farewell of his friends; selected
his burial-place; and going resigned to his fate, in due time expired
like the rest.
Had any one of them cast about for some alleviating circumstance, he
might possibly have derived some little consolation from the thought,
that though a slave to the whims of thirty princesses, he was
nevertheless one of their guardians, and as such, he might ingeniously
have concluded, their superior. But small consolation this. For the
damsels were as blithe as larks, more playful than kittens; never
looking sad and sentimental, projecting clandestine escapes. But
supplied with the thirtieth part of all that Aspasia could desire;
glorying in being the spouses of a king; nor in the remotest degree
anxious about eventual dowers; they were care-free, content, and
rejoicing, as the rays of the morning.
Poor old men, then; it would be hard to distill out of your fate, one
drop of the balm of consolation. For, commissioned to watch over those
who forever kept you on the trot, affording you no time to hunt up
peccadilloes; was not this circumstance an aggravation of hard times? a
sharpening and edge-giving to the steel in your souls?
But much yet remains unsaid.
To dwell no more upon the eternal wear-and-tear incident to these
attenuated old warders, they were intensely hated by the damsels.
Inasmuch, as it was archly opined, for what ulterior purposes they were
retained.
Nightly couching, on guard, round the seraglio, like fangless old
bronze dragons round a fountain enchanted, the old men ever and anon
cried out mightily, by reason of sore pinches and scratches received in
the dark: And tri-trebly-tri-triply girt about as he was, Donjalolo
himself started from his slumbers, raced round and round through his
ten thousand corridors; at last bursting all dizzy among his
twenty-nine queens, to see what under the seventh-heavens was the
matter. When, lo and behold! there lay the innocents all sound asleep;
the dragons moaning over their mysterious bruises.
Ah me! his harem, like all large families, was the delight and the
torment of the days and nights of Donjalolo.
And in one special matter was he either eminently miserable, or
otherwise: for all his multiplicity of wives, he had never an heir. Not
his, the proud paternal glance of the Grand Turk Solyman, looking round
upon a hundred sons, all bone of his bone, and squinting with his
squint.