Declaring that there was no alternative but compliance, Media acceded; and with the king’s messengers we returned to the glen.

CHAPTER LXXXIV
Taji Sits Down To Dinner With Five-And-Twenty Kings, And A Royal Time
They Have

It was afternoon when we emerged from the defile.  And informed that our host was receiving his guests in the House of the Afternoon, thither we directed our steps.

Soft in our face, blew the blessed breezes of Omi, stirring the leaves overhead; while, here and there, through the trees, showed the idol-bearers of the royal retreat, hand in hand, linked with festoons of flowers.  Still beyond, on a level, sparkled the nodding crowns of the kings, like the constellation Corona-Borealis, the horizon just gained.

Close by his noon-tide friend, the cascade at the mouth of the grotto, reposed on his crimson mat, Donjalolo:—­arrayed in a vestment of the finest white tappa of Mardi, figured all over with bright yellow lizards, so curiously stained in the gauze, that he seemed overrun, as with golden mice.

Marjora’s girdle girdled his loins, tasseled with the congregated teeth of his sires.  A jeweled turban-tiara, milk-white, surmounted his brow, over which waved a copse of Pintado plumes.

But what sways in his hand?  A scepter, similar to those likenesses of scepters, imbedded among the corals at his feet.  A polished thigh-bone; by Braid-Beard declared once Teei’s the Murdered.  For to emphasize his intention utterly to rule, Marjora himself had selected this emblem of dominion over mankind.

But even this last despite done to dead Teei had once been transcended.  In the usurper’s time, prevailed the belief, that the saliva of kings must never touch ground; and Mohi’s Chronicles made mention, that during the life time of Marjora, Teei’s skull had been devoted to the basest of purposes:  Marjora’s, the hate no turf could bury.

Yet, traditions like these ever seem dubious.  There be many who deny the hump, moral and physical, of Gloster Richard.

Still advancing unperceived, in social hilarity we descried their Highnesses, chatting together like the most plebeian of mortals; full as merry as the monks of old.  But marking our approach, all changed.  A pair of potentates, who had been playfully trifling, hurriedly adjusted their diadems, threw themselves into attitudes, looking stately as statues.  Phidias turned not out his Jupiter so soon.

In various-dyed robes the five-and-twenty kings were arrayed; and various their features, as the rows of lips, eyes and ears in John Caspar Lavater’s physiognomical charts.  Nevertheless, to a king, all their noses were aquiline.

There were long fox-tail beards of silver gray, and enameled chins, like those of girls; bald pates and Merovingian locks; smooth brows and wrinkles:  forms erect and stooping; an eye that squinted; one king was deaf; by his side, another that was halt; and not far off, a dotard.  They were old and young, tall and short, handsome and ugly, fat and lean, cunning and simple.