jolly woe! It would appall thee, my Right Worshipful lord
Abrazza!

ABRAZZA (_to Media_)--My dear lord, his teeth are marvelously white
and sharp: some she-shark must have been his dam:--does he often grin
thus? It was infernal!

MEDIA--Ah! that's Azzageddi. But, prithee, Babbalanja, proceed.

BABBALANJA--Your Highness, even in his calmer critic moods, Lombardo
was far from fancying his work. He confesses, that it ever seemed to
him but a poor scrawled copy of something within, which, do what he
would, he could not completely transfer. "My canvas was small," said
he; "crowded out were hosts of things that came last. But Fate is in
it." And Fate it was, too, your Highness, which forced Lombardo, ere
his work was well done, to take it off his easel, and send it to be
multiplied. "Oh, that I was not thus spurred!" cried he; "but like
many another, in its very childhood, this poor child of mine must go
out into Mardi, and get bread for its sire."

ABRAZZA (_with a sigh_)--Alas, the poor devil! But methinks 'twas
wondrous arrogant in him to talk to all Mardi at that lofty rate.--Did
he think himself a god?

BABBALANJA--He himself best knew what he thought; but, like all
others, he was created by Oro to some special end; doubtless, partly
answered in his Koztanza.

MEDIA--And now that Lombardo is long dead and gone--and his work,
hooted during life, lives after him--what think the present company of
it? Speak, my lord Abrazza! Babbalanja! Mohi! Yoomy!

ABRAZZA (_tapping his sandal with his scepter__)--I never read it.

BABBALANJA (_looking upward_)--It was written with a divine intent.

Mohi (_stroking his beard_)--I never hugged it in a corner, and
ignored it before Mardi.

Yoomy (_musing_)--It has bettered my heart.

MEDIA (_rising_)--And I have read it through nine times.

BABBALANJA (_starting up_)--Ah, Lombardo! this must make thy ghost
glad!

CHAPTER LXXVII
They Sup

There seemed something sinister, hollow, heartless, about Abrazza, and
that green-and-yellow, evil-starred crown that he wore.

But why think of that? Though we like not something in the curve of
one's brow, or distrust the tone of his voice; yet, let us away with
suspicions if we may, and make a jolly comrade of him, in the name of
the gods. Miserable! thrice miserable he, who is forever turning over
and over one's character in his mind, and weighing by nice
avoirdupois, the pros and the cons of his goodness and badness. For we