We will.

When Media ate slowly, Borabolla took him to task, bidding him dispatch his viands more speedily.

Whereupon said Media “But Borabolla, my round fellow, that would abridge the pleasure.”

“Not at all, my dear demi-god; do like me:  eat fast and eat long.”

In the middle of the feast, a huge skin of wine was brought in.  The portly peltry of a goat; its horns embattling its effigy head; its mouth the nozzle; and its long beard flowed to its jet-black hoofs.  With many ceremonial salams, the attendants bore it along, placing it at one end of the convivial mats, full in front of Borabolla; where seated upon its haunches it made one of the party.

Brimming a ram’s horn, the mellowest of bugles, Borabolla bowed to his 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.