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Updated: June 2, 2025
The question was then taken up by the dervishes and fakirs of the country in a religious point of view; they split into two parties, tried the question by a dispute under a banyan tree, which lasted eighteen months, and still not half of the holy men had given their sentiments upon the question; tired of talking, they proceeded to blows, and then to anathematisation and excommunication of each other; lastly, they had recourse to impalement to convince each other; more than a thousand perished on each side: and still the beautiful Princess Babe-bi-bobu remained unmarried.
I don't care how long it is, only let us have no more princesses to be married. That Babe-bi-bobu was enough to tire the patience of a dervish." "Your sublime highness shall be obeyed," replied Menouni. "Would it please you to hear the story of Yussuf, the Water-Carrier?" "Yes, that sounds better. You may proceed."
On the fourth day, the beautiful Babe-bi-bobu again took her seat on the golden cushions, with her legs crossed, and her little feet hidden under the folds of her loose, azure-coloured satin trousers, and it was supposed that there was more brightness in her eyes, and more animation in her countenance than on the previous days; but still the crowd passed on unnoticed.
When, therefore, two years after her father's death, the beautiful Babe-bi-bobu had attained the age of twelve years, swift runners on foot, and speedy messengers mounted upon the fleetest dromedaries and Arab horses of the purest race, were dispatched through all the kingdom of Souffra to make known the injunctions of the will; the news of which at last flew to the adjacent kingdoms, and from them to all the corners of the round world, and none were ignorant.
This great question was at last very properly referred to the mufti; these sages handled it, and turned it, and twisted it, added to it, multiplied it, subtracted from it, and divided it, debated it fasting, debated it on a full stomach, nodded over it, dreamt on it, slept on it, woke up with it, analysed it, criticised it, and wrote forty-eight folio volumes, of which twenty-four were advocates of, and twenty-four opponents to the question; the only conclusion which they could come to at last was, that moles were moles: and the beautiful Princess Babe-bi-bobu remained unmarried.
In the meantime the beauteous Princess Babe-bi-bobu had recovered, and was in the arms of Acota, who, resigning her to her attendant maidens, addressed the assembly in a speech of so much eloquence, so much beauty, and so much force, that it was written down in letters of gold, being considered the ne plus ultra of the Souffrarian language; he explained to them the nefarious attempt of Mezrimbi to counteract the will of Heaven, and how he had fallen into the snare which he had laid for others.
The sun had nearly reached to the zenith, and looked down almost enviously upon the gay scene beneath, broiling the brains of the good people of Souffra, whose heads paved, as it were, the country for ten square miles, when the beauteous Princess Babe-bi-bobu made her appearance in the hall of audience, attended by her maidens and the grandees of Souffra, who were the executors to her father's will.
Everyone praised the wisdom of this edict; it was read and subscribed to as an article of faith; towns greeted towns, house congratulated house, and relations shook hands; what was still stranger was, husbands and wives were reconciled and what was even more delightful, there was now some chance of the beautiful Princess Babe-bi-bobu no longer remaining unmarried.
The beauteous Babe-bi-bobu feared him, for there was a clause in her father's will, by which, if the first choice of the princess should prove by any intermediate accident to be ineligible, his father, the chief brahmin, was empowered to make a selection for the princess, and his decision was to be equally inviolable.
"But why," interrupted the pacha, "why did they not marry her, when there were three millions of young men ready to take her? I can't understand the cause of six years' delay." The reason, most sublime, was, that the grandees of Souffra were not endowed with your resplendent wisdom, or the beautiful Babe-bi-bobu had not so long languished for a husband.
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