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He has a ready humor, which shows itself in smart sayings and repartees, that take occasionally the favorite Oriental turn of parable or apologue. He is mild in his treatment of the prisoners that fall into his hands, and ready to forgive even the heinous crime of rebellion. He has none of the pride of the ordinary eastern despot, but converses on terms of equality with those about him.
Whatever may offend propriety, whatever may produce an unwholesome excitement, is excluded; for the hilarity of the audience, there is an occasional introduction on the stage of a parasite or a buffoon. The representation is usually opened by an apologue and always concluded with a prayer. Kalidasa, the Hindu Shakespeare, has been called by his countrymen the Bridegroom of Poetry.
Herbert Spencer's apologue of the ephemeron which had never witnessed the change of a child into a man?" The apologue, I may say in passing, is not Mr. Spencer's; it is by the author of the "Vestiges," and will be found on page 161 of the 1853 edition of that book; but let this pass.
I sympathize with the poor trembling artist, and agree most cordially that the whole story is a lie; and he may rely upon my support at all times to the extent of denying that any vestige of truth probably lay at the foundations of his ingenious apologue. And what I say of the English fable, I am willing to say of the French one. Both, I dare say, were the rankest fictions.
But I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, which I remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, of all the birds being invited to the linnets' wedding, at which, when all the rest came in their gayest feathers, the raven alone apologised for his cloak because "he had no other." This tolerably reconciled the elders.
Mockery, however, did not cure me, and I continued my efforts in spite of the apologue of the Principal, Monsieur Mareschal, who one day related to me the misfortunes of a linnet that tried to fly before being fully fledged. He wished, no doubt, to turn me from my inveterate habit.
Tom Breeks had either taken in too much air, or the ale that had hitherto successfully prompted him was antipathetic to the nice delicacy of an apologue; for now his arm began to work and his forehead had to be mopped, and he lashed the words "Union and Harmony" right and left, until, coming on a sentence that sounded in his ears like the close of his speech, he stared ahead, with a dim idea that he had missed a point.
There was no apologue more popular in the Middle Ages than that of the hermit, who, musing on the wickedness and tyranny of those whom the inscrutable wisdom of Providence had intrusted with the government of the world, fell asleep and awoke to find himself the very monarch whose abject life and capricious violence had furnished the subject of his moralizing.
But he brought no special message, lifted not the curtain of mystery, did nothing to clear our minds upon the subject. His apologue of Dives and Lazarus shows that to Him as to us the other world was a realm of the imagination.
"My good friend," said Varnhorst with a grave smile, which more reminded me of Guiscard, "remember the Arab apologue, that every man is born with two strings tied to him, one large and visible, but made of twisted feathers; the other so fine as to be invisible, but made of twisted steel.
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