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Updated: June 26, 2025
"I hope you have forgotten the lack of appreciation you met at the hands of my crowd of thoughtless banqueters in the ovation you have had this evening." Harriet's little figure suddenly stiffened at the sight of Nan, but at the sound of her friendly voice, relaxed, and moved to meet the extended hand. "Thank you, Mrs. Bivens," she replied cordially.
She saw again the ghiassas drifting down the great river, laden with dourha; she saw the mosque of the blue tiles with its placid fountain, and its handful of worshippers praying by the olive-tree. She watched the moon rise above the immobile Sphinx, she looked down on the banqueters in the Palace, David among them, and Foorgat Bey beside her. She saw Foorgat Bey again lying dead at her feet.
The musicians, too, appeared to be in high feather, and the merriest music of the day assisted the noble banqueters' digestion. Under ordinary circumstances, it was rather a tantalizing scene to stand aloof and contemplate; and so the guards very likely felt; but Sir Norman's thoughts were of that room in black, the headsman's axe, and Leoline.
Vessels of fragrant waters, in which the banqueters dipped their fingers, were handed round; perfumes, which the Byzantine marts collected from every clime, escaped from their precious receptacles. Then were distributed the garlands.
He would not applaud a banquet given in the midst of a famine, although it might be clearly proved that the money spent by the banqueters was their own, that those who were perishing of famine had not been robbed of it, that their bellies were none the emptier because those of the banqueters were full, and that the cookery gave a stimulus to gastronomic art.
For at Losely's first appearance at the convivial meeting just concluded, being nettled at the imperious airs of superiority which that roysterer assumed, mistaking for effeminacy Jasper's elaborate dandyism, and not recognizing in the bravo's elegant proportions the tiger-like strength of which, in truth, that tiger-like suppleness should have warned him, Dolly Poole provoked a quarrel, and being himself a stout fellow, nor unaccustomed to athletic exercises, began to spar; the next moment he was at the other end of the room full sprawl on the floor; and two minutes afterwards, the quarrel made up by conciliating banqueters, with every bone in his skin seeming still to rattle, he was generously blubbering out that he never bore malice, and shaking hands with Jasper Losely as if he had found a benefactor.
Girard had participated in great military crises; he had marshalled his troop in line of battle; as a mere boy, he had ridden with the guidon lance planted on his stirrup, with the pennant flying above his head, as the marker to lead the fierce and famous Dov-inger Rangers into the thickest of the fight; yet he had never felt such palpitant tremors of excitement as when he stood on the hotel piazza of the New Helvetia Springs, where the banqueters had gathered, and suffered the ordeal of introduction to sundry groups of fashionable ladies.
So they went down to the kitchen and told the girl she was wanted in the hall. Then she washed and tidied herself and put the Baron's gold ring on her thumb and went up into the hall. When the banqueters saw such a young and beautiful cook they were surprised. But the Baron was in a tower of a temper, and started up as if he would do her some violence.
Let the sympathising reader recognise all that is dramatic in the conflict between hunger and affection; let him recall to mind the lachrymose loving-kindness of his own post-prandial emotions after blissfully breaking some fast, less mercilessly prolonged, we will hope, than that of these besieged banqueters, and then, though unaided by the fancy which conceived so quaint a situation, he may perhaps imagine what tearful tenderness would fill the eyes of the kind-hearted Frederic, as they contemplate the well-picked bones of his sacrificed favourite on the plate before him; which he pushes away, sighing, "Ah, poor Fox! how he would have enjoyed those bones!"
So far as his exterior developed him, he might much more suitably have found a place at some merry Christmas table, than have been numbered among the blighted, fate-stricken, fancy-tortured set of ill-starred banqueters. Murmurs arose among the guests as they noted, the glance of general scrutiny which the intruder threw over his companions. What had he to do among them?
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