me down! lay me down! good gods,
what a twinge!"

The goblet fell from his hand; the purple flew from his wine to his
face; and Borabolla fell back into the arms of his servitors. "That
gout! that gout!" he groaned. "Lord! lord! no more cursed wine will I
drink!"

Then at ten paces distant, a clumsy attendant let fall a trencher--
"Take it off my foot, you knave!"

Afar off another entered gallanting a calabash--"Look out for my toe,
you hound!"

During all this, the attendants tenderly nursed him. And in good
time, with its thousand fangs, the gout-fiend departed for a while.

Reprieved, the old king brightened up; by degrees becoming jolly
as ever.

"Come! let us be merry again," he cried, "what shall we eat? and what
shall we drink? that infernal gout is gone; come, what will your
worships have?"

So at it once more we went.

But of our feast, little more remains to be related than this;--that
out of it, grew a wondrous kindness between Borabolla and Jarl.
Strange to tell, from the first our fat host had regarded my Viking
with a most friendly eye. Still stranger to add, this feeling was
returned. But though they thus fancied each other, they were very
unlike; Borabolla and Jarl. Nevertheless, thus is it ever. And as the
convex fits not into the convex, but into the concave; so do men fit
into their opposites; and so fitted Borabolla's arched paunch into
Jarl's, hollowed out to receive it.

But how now? Borabolla was jolly and loud: Jarl demure and silent;
Borabolla a king: Jarl only a Viking;--how came they together? Very
plain, to repeat:--because they were heterogeneous; and hence the
affinity. But as the affinity between those chemical opposites
chlorine and hydrogen, is promoted by caloric; so the affinity
between Borabolla and Jarl was promoted by the warmth of the wine
that they drank at this feast. For of all blessed fluids, the juice
of the grape is the greatest foe to cohesion. True, it tightens the
girdle; but then it loosens the tongue, and opens the heart.

In sum, Borabolla loved Jarl; and Jarl, pleased with this sociable
monarch, for all his garrulity, esteemed him the most sensible old
gentleman and king he had as yet seen in Mardi. For this reason,
perhaps; that his talkativeness favored that silence in listeners,
which was my Viking's delight in himself.

Repeatedly during the banquet, our host besought Taji to allow his
henchman to remain on the island, after the rest of our party