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And then, the unveiled wonders of that strange, new world of canvas and pasteboard and trap-doors, people, Nature, Art, and architecture, never before beheld, and but faintly conceived of, the magic of shifting scenes, the suddenness and awfulness of subterranean and aerial descents and ascents, the solemn stage-walk of the heroine, the majestic strut of the hero, the princely sweep of velvet, the illusive sparkle of paste, the rattle of Brobdignagian pearls, the saucy tossing of pages' plumes, the smiles, the wiles, the astonishing bounds and bewildering pirouettes of the dancing Houries, the great sobs and small shrieks of persecuted beauty, the blighting smile of the villain, the lofty indifference of supernumeraries!
Heaven and hell, the one with its joyous sunshine, the other with its lurid lights, appeared to struggle and mix up their flashes on Sid Norman's countenance, till gratitude, that rarest grace, was quenched, and hell triumphed. 'Than all the nectar ever served in golden cups and brewed by houries in Mahomet's paradise, revenge is sweeter, he murmured to himself.
If he met an unmarried female only for five minutes, be she old or ugly, young or handsome, he devoted at least four minutes and three-quarters to the tender passion; made love to her with an earnestness that would deceive a saint; backed all his protestations with a superfluity of round oaths; and drew such a picture of her beauty as might suit the Houries of Mahomet's paradise.
The more intelligent of the Moslems give a spiritual interpretation to the nature of the Heaven promised by the Prophet, and I have heard several openly confess their disbelief in the seventy houries and the palaces of pearl and emerald. Shekh Mahommed Senoosee scarcely ever utters a sentence in which is not the word "Allah," and "La illah il' Allah" is repeated at least every five minutes.
The number of these ladies was some two hundred. They are all attired alike, except the four wives, who dress a little more in the style of Sultanas. I am sorry to be obliged to disabuse the reader of the romance and oriental colouring attached to our ideas of the harem, by giving Madame Bousac's simile of those angelic houries.
Certainly, Adèle was "beautiful as the Houries and wise as Zobeide". Considerations of policy and expediency, which sometimes appear on the mental horizon of older people, were quite unknown to our young hero. So he returned to the only aspect of the case that gave him real disquiet.
What! no poor, all nobles, all fat, all glittering in court raiment, all surfeited with sweets, all bathing in Johannisberg and champagne, all tended by houries, all pillowed on orange-scented beds, and covered with gauze or eider down, according to the season? Charming Satan! Selfishness made universal will be selfishness no more. Thou art an angel of light!
Since we have learned how injurious to true social development this mistaken kindness is, it might almost be classified as a morbid by-product of suppressed femininity! In passing we may note that charity as a virtue is ranked highest among those nations and religions where women are held lowest. With the Moslems it is a universal law and in the Moslem Paradise there are no women save the Houries!
But all is white, perfectly white, so that the whole seems cut out of an immense chalk rock, though true it is that you behold here and there tall green trees springing up from amidst the whiteness: perhaps they belong to Moorish gardens, and beneath them even now peradventure is reclining many a dark-eyed Leila, akin to the houries.
Remembering the fasts, the vigils, the penances, the cloisters, the scourgings of a corrupt Christianity, and contrasting them with the voluptuous paradise and the sensual houries which inflamed the eager vision of the Moslem, he once exclaimed in phrase characteristic of his genius, "The religion of Jesus is a threat, that of Mohammed." The religion of Jesus is not a threat.
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