that I might determine aright.  Yet why do I pause? did not Rani, and Atama, and Mardonna, my ancestors, each see for himself, free Mardi; and did they not fly the proffered girdle; choosing rather to be free to come and go, than bury themselves forever in this fatal glen?  Oh Mardi!  Mardi! art thou then so fair to see?  Is liberty a thing so glorious?  Yet can I be no king, and behold thee!  Too late, too late, to view thy charms and then return.  My sire! my sire! thou hast wrung my heart with this agony of doubt.  Tell me, comrades,—­for ye have seen it,—­is Mardi sweeter to behold, than it is royal to reign over Juam?  Silent, are ye?  Knowing what ye do, were ye me, would ye be kings?  Tell me, Talara.—­No king:  no king:—­that were to obey, and not command.  And none hath Donjalolo ere obeyed but the king his father.  A king, and my voice may be heard in farthest Mardi, though I abide in narrow Willamilla.  My sire! my sire!  Ye flying clouds, what look ye down upon?  Tell me, what ye see abroad?  Methinks sweet spices breathe from out the cave.”

“Hail, Donjalolo, King of Juam,” now sounded with acclamations from the groves.

Starting, the young prince beheld a multitude approaching:  warriors with spears, and maidens with flowers; and Kubla, a priest, lifting on high the tasseled girdle of Teei, and waving it toward him.

The young chiefs fell back.  Kubla, advancing, came close to the prince, and unclasping the badge of royalty, exclaimed, “Donjalolo, this instant it is king or subject with thee:  wilt thou be girdled monarch?”

Gazing one moment up the dark defile, then staring vacantly, Donjalolo turned and met the eager gaze of Darfi.  Stripping off his mantle, the next instant he was a king.

Loud shouted the multitude, and exulted; but after mutely assisting at the closing of the cavern, the new-girdled monarch retired sadly to his dwelling, and was not seen again for many days.

CHAPTER LXXIII Something More Of The Prince

Previous to recording our stay in his dominions, it only remains to be related of Donjalolo, that after assuming the girdle, a change came over him.

During the lifetime of his father, he had been famed for his temperance and discretion.  But when Mardi was forever shut out; and he remembered the law of his isle, interdicting abdication to its kings; he gradually fell into desperate courses, to drown the emotions at times distracting him.

His generous spirit thirsting after some energetic career, found itself narrowed down within the little glen of Willamilla, where ardent impulses seemed idle.  But these are hard to die; and repulsed all round, recoil upon themselves.

So with Donjalolo; who, in many a riotous scene, wasted the powers which might have compassed the noblest designs.

Not many years had elapsed since the death of the king, his father.  But the still youthful prince was no longer the bright-eyed and elastic boy who at the dawn of day had sallied out to behold the landscapes of the neighboring isles.