But why think of that?  Though we like not something in the curve of one’s brow, or distrust the tone of his voice; yet, let us away with suspicions if we may, and make a jolly comrade of him, in the name of the gods.  Miserable! thrice miserable he, who is forever turning over and over one’s character in his mind, and weighing by nice avoirdupois, the pros and the cons of his goodness and badness.  For we are all good and bad.  Give me the heart that’s huge as all Asia; and unless a man, be a villain outright, account him one of the best tempered blades in the world.

That night, in his right regal hall, King Abrazza received us.  And in merry good time a fine supper was spread.

Now, in thus nocturnally regaling us, our host was warranted by many ancient and illustrious examples.

For old Jove gave suppers; the god Woden gave suppers; the Hindoo deity Brahma gave suppers; the Red Man’s Great Spirit gave suppers:—­ chiefly venison and game.

And many distinguished mortals besides.

Ahasuerus gave suppers; Xerxes gave suppers; Montezuma gave suppers; Powhattan gave suppers; the Jews’ Passovers were suppers; the Pharaohs gave suppers; Julius Caesar gave suppers:—­and rare ones they were; Great Pompey gave suppers; Nabob Crassus gave suppers; and Heliogabalus, surnamed the Gobbler, gave suppers.

It was a common saying of old, that King Pluto gave suppers; some say he is giving them still.  If so, he is keeping tip-top company, old Pluto:—­Emperors and Czars; Great Moguls and Great Khans; Grand Lamas and Grand Dukes; Prince Regents and Queen Dowagers:—­Tamerlane hob-a-nobbing with Bonaparte; Antiochus with Solyman the Magnificent; Pisistratus pledging Pilate; Semiramis eating bon-bons with Bloody Mary, and her namesake of Medicis; the Thirty Tyrants quaffing three to one with the Council of Ten; and Sultans, Satraps, Viziers, Hetmans, Soldans, Landgraves, Bashaws, Doges, Dauphins, Infantas, Incas, and Caciques looking on.

Again:  at Arbela, the conqueror of conquerors, conquering son of Olympia by Jupiter himself, sent out cards to his captains,—­ Hephestion, Antigonus, Antipater, and the rest—­to join him at ten, p.m., in the Temple of Belus; there, to sit down to a victorious supper, off the gold plate of the Assyrian High Priests.  How majestically he poured out his old Madeira that night!—­feeling grand and lofty as the Himmalehs; yea, all Babylon nodded her towers in his soul!

Spread, heaped up, stacked with good things; and redolent of citrons and grapes, hilling round tall vases of wine; and here and there, waving with fresh orange-boughs, among whose leaves, myriads of small tapers gleamed like fire-flies in groves,—­Abrazza’s glorious board showed like some banquet in Paradise:  Ceres and Pomona presiding; and jolly Bacchus, like a recruit with a mettlesome rifle, staggering back as he fires off the bottles of vivacious champagne.

In ranges, roundabout stood living candelabras:—­lackeys, gayly bedecked, with tall torches in their hands; and at one end, stood trumpeters, bugles at their lips.