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Updated: June 26, 2025
He flashed a bright look of gratitude upon me and was silent, listening to the choice and complimentary phrases uttered by the Duke di Manna concerning the exquisite taste displayed in the arrangement of the table. "You have no doubt traveled much in the East, conte," said this nobleman. "Your banquet reminds me of an Oriental romance I once read, called 'Vathek."
I had read widely and confusedly "Vathek," Shelley, Tom Paine, Plutarch, Carlyle, Haeckel, William Morris, the Bible, the Freethinker, the Clarion, "The Woman Who Did," I mention the ingredients that come first to mind. All sorts of ideas were jumbled up in me and never a lucid explanation.
They all avoided each other, and, though surrounded by a multitude that no one could number, each wandered at random, unheedful of the rest, as if alone on a desert which no foot had trodden. Vathek and Nouronihar, frozen with terror at a sight so baleful, demanded of the Giaour what these appearances might mean, and why these ambulating spectres never withdrew their hands from their hearts.
“Tush, dolt!” answered Vathek; “and know that all this infinitely charms me; nor shall I leave the meadow till I have visited every hive of these pious mendicants.”
The Caliph and Nouronihar assented to the proposal, and Vathek began, not without tears and lamentations, a sincere recital of every circumstance that had passed. When the afflicting narrative was closed, the young man entered on his own.
Forthwith all the inhabitants of this vast city quitted their habitations, and ran together in crowds to see the procession of Vathek and the Indian, whom they now blessed as much as they had before execrated, incessantly shouting: “He hath healed our sovereign; he hath spoken! he hath spoken!” Nor were these words forgotten in the public festivals which were celebrated the same evening, to testify the general joy; for the poets applied them as a chorus to all the songs they composed.
Vathek, both terrified for her life and furious at an opposition to his will, bade Fakreddin assist his daughter, and withdrew, darting his terrible look at the unfortunate Emir, who suddenly fell backward, bathed in a sweat cold as the damp of death.
A great number of torches lent a gloomy lustre to the hall, which, like those of the Caliph Vathek, was of large dimensions. At the upper end, however, they at length arrived, where a sword and horn lay on an antique table.
In the first event he had bidden an eternal farewell to open-hearted converse, and entire sympathy with the companion of his life. The veil must be thicker than that invented by Turkish jealousy; the wall higher than the unscaleable tower of Vathek, which should conceal from her the workings of his heart, and hide from her view the secret of his actions. This idea was intolerably painful to him.
"I thought," ventured the young man, "I thought that perhaps you might ask me to stay to supper. It's so lonely at Greenwood." "You stayed to supper last night," said Miss Dandridge pensively, "and you were here to dinner the day before, and you rode over the preceding afternoon, and the morning before that you read me Vathek. Oh, stay to supper by all means!"
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