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- CHAPTER LXXIX.
Babbalanja At The Full Of The Moon
“Ho, mortals! Go we to a funeral, that our paddles seem thus muffled?
Up heart, Taji! or does that witch Hautia haunt thee? Be a demi-god
once more, and laugh. Her flowers are not barbs; and the avengers’
arrows are too blunt to slay. Babbalanja! Mohi! Yoomy! up heart! up
heart!—By Oro! I will debark the whole company on the next land we
meet. No tears for me. Ha, ha! let us laugh. Ho, Vee-Vee! awake; quick,
boy,—some wine! and let us make glad, beneath the glad moon. Look! it
is stealing forth from its clouds. Perdition to Hautia! Long lives, and
merry ones to ourselves! Taji, my charming fellow, here’s to you:—May
your heart be a stone! Ha, ha!—will nobody join me? My laugh is lonely
as his who laughed in his tomb. Come, laugh; will no one quaff wine, I
say? See! the round moon is abroad.”
“Say you so, my lord? then for one, I am with you;” cried Babbalanja.
“Fill me a brimmer. Ah! but this wine leaps through me like a panther.
Ay, let us laugh: let us roar: let us yell! What, if I was sad but just
now? Life is an April day, that both laughs and weeps in a breath. But
whoso is wise, laughs when he can. Men fly from a groan; but run to a
laugh. Vee-Vee! your gourd. My lord, let me help you. Ah, how it
sparkles! Cups, cups, Vee-Vee, more cups! Here, Taji, take that: Mohi,
take that: Yoomy, take that. And now let us drown away grief. Ha! ha!
the house of mourning, is deserted, though of old good cheer kept the
funeral guests; and so keep I mine; here I sit by my dead, and
replenish your wine cups. Old Mohi, your cup: Yoomy, yours: ha! ha! let
us laugh, let us scream! Weeds are put off at a fair; no heart bursts
but in secret; it is good to laugh, though the laugh be hollow; and
wise to make merry, now and for aye. Laugh, and make friends: weep, and
they go. Women sob, and are rid of their grief: men laugh, and retain
it. There is laughter in heaven, and laughter in hell. And a deep
thought whose language is laughter. Though wisdom be wedded to woe,
though the way thereto is by tears, yet all ends in a shout. But wisdom
wears no weeds; woe is more merry than mirth; ’tis a shallow grief that
is sad. Ha! ha! how demoniacs shout; how all skeletons grin; we all die
with a rattle. Laugh! laugh! Are the cherubim grave? Humor, thy laugh
is divine; whence, mirth-making idiots have been revered; and therefore
may I. Ho! let us be gay, if it be only for an hour, and Death hand us
the goblet. Vee-Vee! bring on your gourds! Let us pledge each other in
bumpers!—let us laugh, laugh, laugh it out to the last. All sages have
laughed,—let us; Bardianna laughed, let us; Demorkriti laughed,—let us:
Amoree laughed,—let us; Rabeelee roared,—let us; the hyenas grin, the
jackals yell,—let us.—But you don’t laugh, my lord? laugh away!”
“No, thank you, Azzageddi, not after that infernal fashion; better
weep.”
“He makes me crawl all over, as if I were an ant-hill,” said Mohi.
“He’s mad, mad, mad!” cried Yoomy.
“Ay, mad, mad, mad!—mad as the mad fiend that rides me!—But come, sweet
minstrel, wilt list to a song?—We madmen are all poets, you know:—Ha!
ha!—
Stars laugh in the sky:
Oh fugle-fi I
The waves dimple below:
Oh fugle-fo!
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