my feet?" cried
another; "Must I soil my dress?" asked a third; "Execrable Bababalouk!"
exclaimed all; "Outcast of hell! what hadst thou to do with torches?
Better were it to be eaten by tigers than to fall into our present
condition! we are for ever undone! Not a porter is there in the army,
nor a currier of camels, but hath seen some part of our bodies, and, what
is worse, our very faces!" On saying this the most bashful amongst them
hid their foreheads on the ground, whist such as had more boldness flew
at Bababalouk; but he, well apprized of their humour, and not wanting in
shrewdness, betook himself to his heels along with his comrades, all
dropping their torches and striking their tymbals.

It was not less light than in the brightest of the dog-days, and the
weather was hot in proportion; but how degrading was the spectacle, to
behold the Caliph bespattered like an ordinary mortal! As the exercise
of his faculties seemed to be suspended, one of his Ethiopian wives (for
he delighted in variety) clasped him in her arms, threw him upon her
shoulder like a sack of dates, and finding that the fire was hemming them
in, set off with no small expedition, considering the weight of her
burden. The other ladies, who had just learnt the use of their feet,
followed her, their guards galloped after, and the camel-drivers brought
up the rear as fast as their charge would permit.

They soon reached the spot where the wild beasts had commenced the
carnage, and which they had too much spirit to leave, notwithstanding the
approaching tumult and the luxurious supper they had made; Bababalouk
nevertheless seized on a few of the plumpest, which were unable to budge
from the place, and began to flay them with admirable adroitness. The
cavalcade being got so far from the conflagration as that the heat felt
rather grateful than violent, it was immediately resolved on to halt.
The tattered chintzes were picked up, the scraps left by the wolves and
tigers interred, and vengeance was taken on some dozens of vultures that
were too much glutted to rise on the wing. The camels, which had been
left unmolested to make sal ammoniac, being numbered, and the ladies once
more enclosed in their cages, the imperial tent was pitched on the
levellest ground they could find.

Vathek, reposing upon a mattress of down, and tolerably recovered from
the jolting of the Ethiopian, who to his feelings seemed the roughest
trotting jade he had hitherto mou