The Sultan-public sits in more than a thousand and one forms, and listens.  Let us regard a few of these forms.

There sits a sallow, peevish, scholar; the tree of his life bears leaves impressed with long and learned words:  diligence and perseverance crawl like snails on the hog’s leather bark:  the moths have got into the inside—­and that is bad, very bad!  Pardon the rich fulness of the song, the inconsiderate enthusiasm, the fresh young, intellect.  Do not behead Scherezade!  But he beheads her out of hand, sans remorse.

There sits a dress-maker, a sempstress who has had some experience of the world.  She comes from strange families, from a solitary chamber where she sat and gained a knowledge of mankind—­she knows and loves the romantic.  Pardon, Miss, if the story has not excitement enough for you, who have sat over the needle and the muslin, and having had so much of life’s prose, gasp after romance.

“Behead her!” says the dress-maker.

There sits a figure in a dressing gown—­this oriental dress of the North, for the lordly minion, the petty prince, the rich brewer’s son, &c., &c., &c.  It is not to be learned from the dressing gown, nor from that lordly look and the fine smile around the mouth, to what stem he belongs:  his demands on Scherezade are just the same as the dress-maker’s:  he must be excited, he must be brought to shudder all down the vertebrae, through the very spine:  he must be crammed with mysteries, such as those which Spriez knew how to connect and thicken.

Scherezade is beheaded!

Wise, enlightened Sultan!  Thou comest in the form of a schoolboy; thou bearest the Romans and Greeks together in a satchel on thy back, as Atlas sustained the world.  Do not cast an evil eye upon poor Scherezade; do not judge her before thou hast learned thy lesson, and art a child again,—­do not behead Scherezade!

Young, full-dressed diplomatist, on whose breast we can count, by the badges of honour, how many courts thou hast visited with thy princely master, speak mildly of Scherezade’s name! speak of her in French, that she may be ennobled above her mother tongue! translate but one strophe of her song, as badly as thou canst, but carry it into the brilliant saloon, and her sentence of death is annulled in the sweet, absolving charmant!

Mighty annihilator and elevator!—­the newspapers’ Zeus—­thou weekly, monthly, and daily journals’ Jupiter, shake not thy locks in anger!  Cast not thy lightnings forth, if Scherezade sing otherwise than thou art accustomed to in thy family, or if she go without a suite of thine own clique.  Do not behead her!

We will see one figure more—­the most dangerous of them all; he with the praise on his lips, like that of the stormy river’s swell—­the blind enthusiast.  The water in which Scherezade dipped her fingers, is for him a fountain of Castalia; the throne he erects to her apotheosis becomes her scaffold.