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He gave many such entertainments at home and abroad; but they were all given to men who were likely to be useful to him to rich men, or the toadies and hangers-on of rich men, the grand viziers of the sultans of the money-market. Such a thing as pleasure or hospitality pure and simple had no place in the plan of Mr. Sheldon's life. The race in which he was running was not to be won by a loiterer.
The monarch, agitated with the most violent and opposite passions, spent the night without closing his eyes. At daybreak he called to him the first of his Viziers, who had not, for a long time, been admitted into his presence. He told him of the insult which he supposed he had received. At this recital the Vizier concealed his secret joy. Envy, hatred, and revenge were about to triumph.
As soon as he appeared the ten Viziers lifted up their voices against him. "Wretch! offspring of villains!" said they to him, "the scythe of death is raised over thy head; thy stratagems are exhausted, and thou art about to receive the reward of thy crimes and rashness."
"At this declaration, the Viziers and Emirs prostrated themselves, and gave thanks to Allah; and the trumpets and the cornets went through the streets of Delhi, and proclaimed my arrival and the victory of Misnar their Sultan over the enchantress Ulin.
I'll get myself elected king in no time whew! Solomon will have to take a back seat!" "Where do we come in on that deal?" I demanded. "Aren't we Viziers or anything?" "Couldn't risk it," he asserted solemnly. "You might start a revolution probably would. No, you'll have to be beheaded, or bowstrung or whatever the popular method of execution is."
A man can easily be put out of the way there, then; it is, indeed, the Bagdad and Bassora of the 'Thousand and One Nights. The sultans and viziers who rule over society there, and who constitute what in France we call the government, are really Haroun-al-Raschids and Giaffars, who not only pardon a poisoner, but even make him a prime minister, if his crime has been an ingenious one, and who, under such circumstances, have the whole story written in letters of gold, to divert their hours of idleness and ennui."
When I entered the large room where he sat, I found him in the midst of a council of war; his chief generals and viziers seated round him, each smoking his hookah, as is the common way with these black fellows, before, at, and after breakfast, dinner, supper, and bedtime.
He does not, like spare Cassius, see quite through the deeds of men, as his friendship for Count Phili Eulenburg and the malodorous "Camarilla" go to show, and his choice of Imperial Chancellors, his grand viziers, has not in every instance been happy.
He ceased then to be visible to the eyes of his warriors, and disappeared with his Viziers and all the Doctors of the Law, designing by that means to convince them fully, and leave no room for jealousy and suspicion. "Return thanks, then, with me," added he, "to Allah and His holy Prophet, for having made me the most powerful Prince upon earth."
After reigning twenty years, he was succeeded by his licentious son, Dhafir, whose faults led to his death at the hand of his vizier, El-Abbas. For the ensuing six years the supreme power in Egypt was mainly the bone of contention between rival viziers, although El-Faiz, a boy of five, was nominally elected caliph on the death of Dhafir.
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