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- 11168
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 11123
- text
- put it into his two hands; who made as if surprised; and after
scrutinising it, and turning it round and round, and discovering the
imbedded relics, affected great admiration at being so promptly and in
that tacit manner confuted in his misbelief; and much did he laud the
beauty of the vase as well; insomuch that the interpreter, a precise
clerk in his careful vocation, verily he seemed as sore put to it to
render My Lord.
But if herein, and all along, My Lord’s purpose was so to work on the
Azem as that he, seeing his great pleasure in the vase, might be drawn
to make a gift of it; I say, if this were My Lord’s intent, it prospered
not to the fulfilment, forasmuch as it was now the Azem’s turn to say
how much he likewise, he himself, esteemed the vase, declaring that at
such rate did he prize it, he would not barter it, no, not for a certain
villa he spake of, though mightily he coveted the same. For besides the
beauty of the vessel and the rare sculpture on it, and its being
incomparably the biggest piece of amber known in those parts; besides
all this, it was the very vase, he avouched--and with a kind of ardour
strange to note in one so much upon his turbaned dignity--the very vase,
in sooth, that being on a bridal festival filled with roses in the
palace of the old Shaz Gold-beak at Shiraz, had tempted their great
poet, one Lugar-Lips, to a closer inspection, when tenderly dividing the
flowers one from another, and noting the little anatomies congealed in
the amber, he was prompted to the inditing of certain verses; for which
cause the vase thenceforth forever was inestimable. To which
extravagance My Lord listened with his wonted civility, nay, and with a
special graciousness, but for all that a bit sadly too, meseemed, and
would now again have swerved the discourse; but the Azem was beforehand,
and bade the page bring him something from a silver-bound chest near by
in an alcove. It was a vellum book, about the bigness of a prayer-book
for church-going, but very rich with jewelled clasps, and writ by some
famous scribe in the fair Persian text, and illuminated withal like unto
the great Popish parchment folios I have seen. And this book, surely of
great cost, the Azem with his own hands right nobly did present to My
Lord, putting his finger on a certain page whereon were traced those
verses aforesaid.
But, shortly after, some sherbet and sweetmeats being served, and the
Azem’s own mules being at the garden gate, and, the more to honour us,
with gorgeous new trappings; our train withdrew in the same state as
when we entered, that is, the one great captain-soldier leading, with a
mighty truncheon in his hand, and his troop making a lane through which
we proceeded to the saddles, they the while salaaming and paying extreme
obeisance to My Lord, which, indeed, was but their bounden duty, for he
was an Englishman and my noble master.
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