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- last. Very precise and foppish in his imperial tastes was this monarch.
Disgusted with the want of uniformity in the stature of his subjects,
he was said to nourish thoughts of killing off all those below his
prescribed standard—six feet, long measure. Immortal souls were of no
account in his fatal wars; since, in some of his serf-breeding estates,
they were daily manufactured to order.
Now, to all the above-mentioned monarchs, old Bello would frequently
dispatch heralds; announcing, for example, his unalterable resolution,
to espouse the cause of this king, against that; at the very time,
perhaps, that their Serene Superfluities, instead of crossing spears,
were touching flagons. And upon these occasions, the kings would often
send back word to old Bello, that instead of troubling himself with
their concerns, he might far better attend to his own; which, they
hinted, were in a sad way, and much needed reform.
The royal old warrior’s pretext for these and all similar proceedings,
was the proper adjustment in Porpheero, of what he facetiously styled
the “Equipoise of Calabashes;” which he stoutly swore was essential to
the security of the various tribes in that country.
“But who put the balance into thy hands, King Bello?” cried the
indignant nations.
“Oro!” shouted the hump-backed king, shaking his javelin.
Superadded to the paternal interest which Bello betrayed in the
concerns of the kings of Porpheero, according to our chronicler, he
also manifested no less interest in those of the remotest islands.
Indeed, where he found a rich country, inhabited by a people, deemed by
him barbarous and incapable of wise legislation, he sometimes relieved
them from their political anxieties, by assuming the dictatorship over
them. And if incensed at his conduct, they flew to their spears, they
were accounted rebels, and treated accordingly. But as old Mohi very
truly observed,—herein, Bello was not alone; for throughout Mardi, all
strong nations, as well as all strong men, loved to govern the weak.
And those who most taunted King Bello for his political rapacity, were
open to the very same charge. So with Vivenza, a distant island, at
times very loud in denunciations of Bello, as a great national brigand.
Not yet wholly extinct in Vivenza, were its aboriginal people, a race
of wild Nimrods and hunters, who year by year were driven further and
further into remoteness, till as one of their sad warriors said, after
continual removes along the log, his race was on the point of being
remorselessly pushed off the end.
Now, Bello was a great geographer, and land surveyor, and gauger of the
seas. Terraqueous Mardi, he was continually exploring in quest of
strange empires. Much he loved to take the altitude of lofty mountains,
the depth of deep rivers, the breadth of broad isles. Upon the highest
pinnacles of commanding capes and promontories, he loved to hoist his
flag. He circled Mardi with his watch-towers: and the distant voyager
passing wild rocks in the remotest waters, was startled by hearing the
tattoo, or the reveille, beating from hump-backed Bello’s omnipresent
drum. Among Antartic glaciers, his shrill bugle calls mingled with the
scream of the gulls; and so impressed seemed universal nature with the
sense of his dominion, that the very clouds in heaven never sailed over
Dominora without rendering the tribute of a shower; whence the air of
Dominora was more moist than that of any other clime.
In all his grand undertakings, King Bello was marvelously assisted by
his numerous fleets of war-canoes; his navy being the largest in Mardi.
Hence his logicians swore that the entire Lagoon was his; and that all
prowling whales, prowling keels, and prowling sharks were invaders. And
with this fine conceit to inspire them, his poets-laureat composed some
glorious old saltwater odes, enough to make your very soul sing to hear
them.
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