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- 10471
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:18.539Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 10396
- text
- silent guest, and thus spoke—“In this wine, which yet smells of the
grape, I pledge you my reverend old toper, my lord Capricornus; you
alone have enough; and here’s full skins to the rest!”
“How jolly he is,” whispered Media to Babbalanja.
“Ay, his lungs laugh loud; but is laughing, rejoicing?”
“Help! help!” cried Borabolla “lay me down! lay me down! good gods,
what a twinge!”
The goblet fell from his hand; the purple flew from his wine to his
face; and Borabolla fell back into the arms of his servitors. “That
gout! that gout!” he groaned. “Lord! lord! no more cursed wine will I
drink!”
Then at ten paces distant, a clumsy attendant let fall a trencher—“Take
it off my foot, you knave!”
Afar off another entered gallanting a calabash—“Look out for my toe,
you hound!”
During all this, the attendants tenderly nursed him. And in good time,
with its thousand fangs, the gout-fiend departed for a while.
Reprieved, the old king brightened up; by degrees becoming jolly as
ever.
“Come! let us be merry again,” he cried, “what shall we eat? and what
shall we drink? that infernal gout is gone; come, what will your
worships have?”
So at it once more we went.
But of our feast, little more remains to be related than this;—that out
of it, grew a wondrous kindness between Borabolla and Jarl. Strange to
tell, from the first our fat host had regarded my Viking with a most
friendly eye. Still stranger to add, this feeling was returned. But
though they thus fancied each other, they were very unlike; Borabolla
and Jarl. Nevertheless, thus is it ever. And as the convex fits not
into the convex, but into the concave; so do men fit into their
opposites; and so fitted Borabolla’s arched paunch into Jarl’s,
hollowed out to receive it.
But how now? Borabolla was jolly and loud: Jarl demure and silent;
Borabolla a king: Jarl only a Viking;—how came they together? Very
plain, to repeat:—because they were heterogeneous; and hence the
affinity. But as the affinity between those chemical opposites chlorine
and hydrogen, is promoted by caloric; so the affinity between Borabolla
and Jarl was promoted by the warmth of the wine that they drank at this
feast. For of all blessed fluids, the juice of the grape is the
greatest foe to cohesion. True, it tightens the girdle; but then it
loosens the tongue, and opens the heart.
In sum, Borabolla loved Jarl; and Jarl, pleased with this sociable
monarch, for all his garrulity, esteemed him the most sensible old
gentleman and king he had as yet seen in Mardi. For this reason,
perhaps; that his talkativeness favored that silence in listeners,
which was my Viking’s delight in himself.
Repeatedly during the banquet, our host besought Taji to allow his
henchman to remain on the island, after the rest of our party should
depart; and he faithfully promised to surrender Jarl, whenever we
should return to claim him.
But though I harbored no distrust of Borabolla’s friendly intentions, I
could not so readily consent to his request; for with Jarl for my one
only companion, had I not both famished and feasted? was he not my only
link to things past?
Things past!—Ah Yillah! for all its mirth, and though we hunted wide,
we found thee not in Mondoldo.
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