Page:The Shaving of Shagpat (1856).djvu/321

Rh was shouting of Shagpat publicly, proclaiming Shagpat shaved, and by his hand, the hand of Baba Mustapha, in the house of Feshnavat the Vizier; and that 'twas the fallen crop of Shagpat he held beneath his arm, even that, a glory of barbercraft! Truly his wits were traitors to the tender parts of him, and he was confounded ere the setting of that day's sun, confronted with Shagpat in his splendour and his gravity, and his enveloping hairiness and his umbrageous growths! Then was he thwacked by order of the King till the flesh of his back was hillocky with purple weals, and he, a moving mass of aches and stings and shooting pains and throbs of unpleasantness, thrust from the gates of the City. The matter was so with Baba Mustapha; but as for how the matter went with me, 'tis certain I was haled to the presence of the King, and denials, protestations, assertions went for nothing; the barber was tracked from my palace, and the wife of Shagpat, she that adoreth him, Kadza, this woman and another, an old woman, a veritable hag, thrice hideous, a mockery of the putting together of flesh and bones, with skin like a frog, throat like a pelican, legs like a peacock, back like a camel

Cried Noorna bin Noorka, "Goorelka of Oolb!"

So the Vizier Feshnavat continued: 'Tis the thing that might be! She then, this crone, swore to my plotting with Baba Mustapha, made oath to my conspiracies against Shagpat, and that I, my emissaries and I, had many times assaulted the holy man of late, tugged at him by the beard and back-hair, offended