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"He is not indeed! Mr. Sagittarius, pray sit down! You are alarming my grandmother." "I can't help that, sir. I am not going to sit here, sir, and be slain." "Tsh! Tsh! I merely informed Sir Tiglath the other evening that what Miss Minerva had told him about you was true." "Miss Minerva!" cried Madame, glancing at her husband in a most terrible manner. "Miss Minerva!"
Frank Buckland's bear, Tiglath Pileser, was cute enough to know where to find the sweet stuff, of which he, in common with his race, was so inordinately fond; for one day when he had broken his chains he was found in a small grocer's shop seated on the counter, and helping himself with liberal paw to brown sugar and lollipops, to the no small discomfort of the good woman who kept the shop.
"The old astronomer demands to know at once if one is, or is not, in a vast madhouse?" "I don't know, sir, indeed," replied Mr. Sagittarius. "I should not like to express an opinion on the point. If you will excu " "Sir, the old astronomer will not excuse you," roared Sir Tiglath, forcibly preventing Mr. Sagittarius, who was pale as ashes, from escaping into the farther room.
"I confess," he said, with becoming modesty in the presence of the great master of modern astronomy, "that I do watch the heavens from that window." "For for purposes of research, Sir Tiglath," answered the Prophet, with some diplomacy. "The young man trieth to put off the old astronomer with fair words," bellowed Sir Tiglath.
And Sir Tiglath flung himself back in his chair, puffing out his enormous cheeks and wagging his gigantic head at Madame who, for once in her life, seemed entirely at a loss, and unable to call to her assistance a single shred of learning from the library of Dr. Carter. Having at last emerged from his Epicurean silence, the astronomer now proceeded to take the floor.
Sagittarius was such, however, that it is very doubtful whether he would not have proceeded thus to disrobe had not the Prophet, rendered desperate by the turn of events, abruptly leaped between Sir Tiglath and his old and valued friend and, gathering the outraged Lady Julia under his arm, exclaimed, "Pray, pray we can discuss this matter more comfortably at dinner. Permit me, Lady Julia.
But what will they think of those short four thousand years during which we have kept a written record of our actions and of our thoughts? They will think of Napoleon as a contemporary of Tiglath Pileser, the Assyrian conqueror. Perhaps they will confuse him with Jenghiz Khan or Alexander the Macedonian.
The illusion of immense achievement, which it was intended thus to create, has often imposed itself on modern critics, and Tiglath Pileser and Sargon are credited with having marched to the neighbourhood of the Caspian, conquering or holding to ransom great provinces, when their forces were probably doing no more than climbing from valley to valley about the headwaters of the Tigris affluents, and raiding chiefs of no greater territorial affluence than the Kurdish beys of Hakkiari.
Bridgeman took it. They walked forward, and almost instantly came upon Sir Tiglath Butt, who, with a face even redder than usual, was rolling away from the hall of the guitars, holding one enormous hand to his ear and snorting indignantly at the various clairvoyants, card-readers, spiritualists and palmists whom he encountered at every step he took.
Remembering who it was that had given the first independent king to Assyria they resented that their city, the chosen seat of the earlier dynasties, which had been restored to primacy by the great Tiglath Pileser, should fall permanently to the second rank.
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