Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845

"Allah Akbar!" cried vizier and emir and dancers, with one voice, and then all burst forth in loud praises of the goodness of Allah, who, through the agency of his slaves, had done so great a wonder, and extracted a refreshing laugh from his highness. This unanimous demonstration of affection on the part of his loving subjects, seemed pleasing to the potentate. He nodded, and the emir, encouraged by this sign of approbation, ventured to draw nearer.

"With all submission" — he began.

"By the Prophet's beard!" interrupted the Caliph, "we know what thou wouldst say before it is spoken. We require not a vizier to talk, but to act as a leech, and draw blood where it is too rich or corrupt. How thinkest thou? If I were to impale one of these lazy dancers, would terror make the others dance better?"

"On the contrary, please your highness, it would lame them. 'Twere better to impale a swine from the herd called the people — one who possesses zechins. Your highness's treasury is empty, and these Almas are as poor as the mice in the churches of the Giaours, and withal right useful servants of the state."

"Thou sayest well; by the Prophet, they are useful servants of the state," cried the Caliph, stroking his belly as he spoke, "and they may be assured of our grace and favour. Strike off the heads of some dozen or two knaves in the quarter of the Bezestein, and let the half of their zechins be given to these poor devils."

There was a gentle tapping at the door, which the vizier hastened to open, and returned with the news that the chief of the mollahs humbly solicited the favour of an audience.

"Again cares of state, and nothing but cares of state!" groaned the Caliph, allowing his head to fall on his breast as if in reflection. "'Tis well," he said at last in a peevish tone. "We will receive the spiritual shepherd of our kingdom. Away with these mummers! 'tis not fitting that the expounder of the Koran should find us in such carnal company."

Dancers and musicians now stepped into the background, and the doors opened to admit the tall figure of the head mollah, who entered with eyes fixed upon the floor; and, on finding himself in presence of the Caliph, knelt down and touched the carpet with his forehead.

"Speak thy business," said the Sultan, "and quickly. We have been already much engrossed with affairs of government, more, perhaps, than is good for the feeble state of our bodily health."

"Bismillah!" quoth the high priest gravely, "we have caused prayers to be offered up from each minaret of the mosques, and have commanded that all true believers should bestrew themselves with dust and ashes. We have sent men upon the holy pilgrimage, and to kiss the black stone of Ararat in order that the sufferings of your sublimity may be alleviated."

"Thou hast done well, oh mollah!" replied the Sultan.

"Luminary of the World, whose light is brighter than the sun," continued the head mollah; "we have also, with regard to this malady of your highness, consulted the book that serves us instead of all the wisdom of the Giaour, and therein have we found that Haroun al Raschid was afflicted with a like evil, which he unquestionably brought on himself through too great attention to the duties of his government."

"Hold there, mollah!" interrupted the Caliph in a voice of thunder, "and weigh thy words before thou speakest. Duties of government, sayest thou? Duties! Who has duties? A worm like myself, that we have been pleased to exalt out of the dust; but we have nought to do either with such reptiles or with duty; we, the vicar of the Prophet. Our pleasure is your duty, and our will your law."

"Doubtless, doubtless, Light of the World," cried the mollah, hastening to correct his error. "Thy unworthy servant meant to say, pleasures. When Haroun al Raschid found himself in similar moments of suffering and despondency, which he unquestionably brought on by too great attention to his pleasures" —

"Slave!" again interrupted the Caliph, "dost thou mock us, saying that our glorious ancestor exhausted himself with pleasures, thus striving to make it appear that we do the same? Do we not each day perform nine times nine prostrations, our face towards Mecca? Did we not, no longer back than yesterday, sign our name full twenty times to the death-warrants of those scurvy and unbelieving hounds who dared to blaspheme us, the Prophet's vicegerent, and to say in the Bezestein — What said the dogs? Have we not given orders to hang, impale, and exterminate like noisome vermin, all those who dare in any way to think or have an opinion? Have we not made this order public, to the great glorification of the Prophet and of our own name?"

The Caliph paused for a moment. Then turning suddenly to the mollah — "You may inform us," said he, "what our ancestor Haroun al Raschid was wont to do when afflicted like ourselves with heaviness of spirit."

"Bismillah!" again began the mollah. "When Haroun al Raschid was thus afflicted, he applied to the book which we have brought with us, and which your highness, if he so pleases, can see and even read" —

"Miserable wretch!" thundered the Caliph, with a glance of scorn at the speaker and his book. "Wherefore do we maintain you, and those like you, if it is not to do for us what we hold it beneath our dignity to do for ourselves? And is not the reading of books beneath our dignity? Do not all books contain the ideas and notions of a pack of scoundrels, who talk about things which they do not understand, and that in no wise concern them? Have we not decreed that the bowstring should be the portion of all those who are reported to be either writers or readers of books? And have we not therefore taken into our service a parcel of idlers, of whom thou art the chief, and whose duty it is to read and think for the whole of our people?"

"And why should the Light of the World read?" replied the mollah after a respectful pause. "He who is already the source of all earthly wisdom, the joy and admiration of all nations? How shall I express my wonder — how shall I sufficiently praise his high qualities?" —

"Stop, mollah!" cried the Caliph. "Know that it does not please us to be praised or wondered at by such as thou. Truly thy praises stink in our nostrils, and are as discords in our ears. It becometh not worms like thyself, whom we have raised from the dirt, and can again dash back into it, to seek to spy out our good qualities, lest at the same time they should discern" — our bad ones, the Caliph would probably have said, but he left the sentence unfinished.

"Thou shouldst look up at us," continued he, "as to the sun, in which neither good nor evil can be seen, but of which the presence is known by its effects. And now tell us what Haroun al Raschid did, when assailed by despondency even as we ourselves are."

"Allah Akbar! Haroun al Raschid, when afflicted like your highness, was wont to disguise himself in various ways, as a merchant, a soldier, or a sailor" —

"All that is well known to us," interposed the Caliph; "but although we are disposed to follow the example of our glorious ancestor so far as we can, without too great exertion of mind or body, yet we doubt whether just now we — Thou knowest," he continued, interrupting himself, and in a lower tone, "that although Haroun al Raschid was certainly our forefather, yet our blood, improving by descent, is even purer and more illustrious than his. We cannot, therefore, condescend to imitate him in the way you speak of. But we will undertake a work that shall be far more pleasing to the Prophet. With our own hands will we embroider a twelfth under petticoat for his blessed mother, so that she may have one for each month in the year."

During the latter part of this dialogue, a whispering had been more than once audible at the door of the apartment. This circumstance, implying the presence of listeners, might well endanger the necks of the daring representatives of the Caliph and his courtiers; but nevertheless, without allowing themselves to be discomposed by the vicinity of spies, the Moslems had played out their parts, and the Caliph now rose from his ottoman with all the dignity of an eastern despot, repeating, as he did so, to his attendants, what great things he would do, and how he would stitch with his own hands a twelfth under petticoat for the mother of the Prophet. The procession had nearly reached the door by which it had entered, when one of the young Mexicans, recovering apparently from the state of inaction in which this extraordinary scene had plunged him and his companions, suddenly sprang forward, gazed earnestly in the face of the Caliph, and then started back again with a cry of horror.

"Por el amor de Dios! Fernando el Rey! 'Tis his majesty, King Ferdinand!" cried the young nobleman. "Stop, traitor!" he exclaimed, again advancing and endeavouring to seize the Caliph. But even in this moment of peril, the latter did not forget his assumed dignity. With a look of the most profound contempt he strode out of the apartment, while the gigantic mollah, seizing the Creole by the collar, raised him from the ground like a feather, and hurling him back into the room, followed the Commander of the Faithful, and shut the door.

Before the Mexican cavaliers had recovered from their alarm at the daring and treasonable dramatic satire of which they had so unwittingly been made spectators, the other doors were thrown violently open, and several alguazils burst into the apartment. After a hurried glance round the room, perceiving that the objects of their search had disappeared, they darted out again at the opposite door, and hastened through the adjacent saloons, uttering loud curses and cries of treason. This furious but fruitless chase led them through the whole suite of apartments, till they came round again to the room where the young noblemen were still assembled.

"Todos diabolos!" cried one of the police agents, running to the window, "yonder go the villains, they have escaped us this time. — Demonio!" vociferated he, with a fury that made the foam fly from his lips.

"And so, Caballeros!" snarled he to the Creoles, who now stood in trembling alarm, and fully enlightened by the rage of the alguazils as to the enormity of the treasonable pasquinade they had witnessed; "so you have been pleased to take the person of his most sacred majesty for your sport and laughing-stock?"

"Don Bautista, on our honour, we knew not."

"By our honour," yelled another alguazil, "you shall pay for this with your heads, Creole hounds that ye are!"

"Don Iago," cried the insulted cavaliers in a threatening tone, "we say that on our honour" —

"Say what you please," interrupted the alguazil, "but I tell you that if I were viceroy" —

"Your turn may come. You are a born Gachupin," cried one of the cavaliers with a bitter sneer.

"I am a Spaniard," retorted the other; "and you are nothing but wretched Creoles; vile, miserable Creoles; y basta!"

The very earth-worm will turn when trodden upon, and this last insult was too much even for Creole endurance. The young men made a furious rush at the alguazil; but he had foreseen the storm and effected a timely retreat.

Hundreds of Creoles of the middle classes, Metises, Zambos, and Spaniards, had assembled in the adjoining apartment, and looked on at the scene without showing any sympathy either with the police or the young Mexicans. The latter gazed for a second or two at each other in perplexity and dismay, and then separating, disappeared through the different doors.

Some extraordinary scenes and incidents grow out of this masquerade, or rather out of the punishment to which the young noblemen who witnessed it are sentenced. But, lest we should exceed our limits, we must reserve further extracts for a second notice of this very remarkable book.

1

The prose even is, in its music, rude in ordinary folks — or artful, as in Hamlet's admiration of the world.

2

Spain and Spaniards in 1843. By Captain S. E. Widdrington, R.N., K.T.S., F.R.S., F.G.S. A Journey across the Desert from Ceylon to Marseilles, &c. &c. By Major and Mrs Griffith. 2 vols. Facts in Mesmerism, with Reasons for a Dispassionate Enquiry into it. By the Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend, A.M.

3

For an account of one of the most notorious of the public exhibitions of mesmeric clairvoyance, we refer the reader, who may feel sufficiently interested in the matter, to the papers of Dr Forbes in the Lancet, New Series, Vol. i. p. 581, and to the counter statement in the Zoist, Vol. ii. No. 7.

4

P. 316.

5

Gachupin is an untranslatable word of Mexican origin. The Spaniards asserted it to mean a hero on horseback; the Indians and coloured races, who applied it as a term of contempt and reproach to the Spaniards and their dependent Creoles, understood by it a thief.

6

The word Léperos, which, literally translated, means lepers, is the term applied to the homeless and houseless wretches who are to be seen wandering by thousands about the city and suburbs of Mexico. They consist of beggars, mechanics, writers, and even artists. The most industrious amongst them work one, or at most two, days in the week, and the dress of these consists of thin trousers, a sort of cloak, and a straw hat. Their dwelling is in any hole or corner, under the arcades of the houses, or in the mud cottages of the suburbs. Some of the work they produce is wonderful for its beauty and ingenuity. They manufacture the finest gold chains, surpassing any thing of the kind that is to be found in Europe. Their statuettes and images of saints are often masterpieces. During the revolution their character as a class became materially worse. There are more than ten thousand of them who do literally nothing, possess nothing, and lie about the streets stark naked, with the exception of a tattered woollen blanket.

7

The chapel of the Redeemer of Atolnico is situated on the summit of a steep and high mountain, two and a half leagues from Miguel el Grande, and is much resorted to by pilgrims. On the high altar are statues of the Saviour, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalen, of solid silver, studded with rubies and emeralds. There are also in the same church thirty other altars, with statues as large as life, pillars, crosses, and candlesticks, all of the same metal. The sums that are each year offered up at this shrine, are said to amount to considerably more than one hundred thousand dollars.

8

A monotonous species of dance.

9

Creoles are born in Mexico of white parents. The Metises are the descendants of whites and Indians, the Mulattoes of whites and Negroes, the Zambos, or Chinos, of Negroes and Indians. The unmixed races are Spaniards, Creoles, Indians, and Negroes. Salta-atras, literally, a spring backwards, is the term applied to those of whom the mothers were of a whiter race than the fathers.

10

The Spaniards, at the period here referred to, (1812,) the rulers and tyrants of Mexico, were estimated at 60,000 souls, or one-twentieth of the white population of the country.

11

Anahuac, the ancient name of Mexico. Mexitli, the god of war of the Mexicans. Guatemozin, the last Mexican emperor. He was tortured in the time of Cortes, to induce him to reveal the place where his treasures were concealed; and subsequently hung for conspiracy, by order of the same Spanish chief.

12

One of the three principal prisons in Mexico.