Comfortably ensconced in the palace of the Deys—elected by a majority of his comrades—the Aga Hamet proceeded to enjoy his high position, and to exercise the authority of ruler of the pirate city.

 

The day after his ascension of what we may call the dangerous throne, he sent for Hadji Baba the story-teller.

 

“Thou art a witty fellow, it seems?” said the Dey, when Baba made his appearance.

 

“So it has been said of me, and so I once thought,” replied the jester humbly; “but I have come to doubt the worth of my own wit, since it has led me to dwell in a palace.”

 

“How so, knave? What mean you?”

 

“In truth, I know not,” replied Baba. “My wit is scarce sufficient to make my meaning plain even to myself. Only I feel that the brilliancy of the wit of those who dwell in palaces is too much for me. ’Twere better, methinks, if I had remained on my shoemaker’s bench.”

 

“’Twere indeed better for thee to have done so, good fellow, if thou canst say nothing better than that,” replied Hamet angrily, for he was a stupid as well as an ambitious man. “Let’s have something better from thee, else the bastinado shall drive sense from thy heels into thy head.”

 

“Nay, then, it is hard,” returned Baba, with a smile, “to be asked to talk sense when I was hired by thy late master—”

 

“My late master!” roared the Dey.

 

“Surely I said ‘my late master,’ did I not?” returned Hadji Baba, rubbing his forehead as if he were confused—as, in truth, the poor fellow was, by the terrible scenes that had lately been enacted in the palace. “As I meant to say, then,—it is hard for me to talk sense when my late master hired me expressly to talk nonsense.”

 

“H’m, yes, very true,” replied the Dey, looking wise. “Let me, then, hear some of thy nonsense.”

 

“Ah, your highness, that is easily done,” said Baba, with sudden animation. “What shall be the subject of my discourse?—the affairs of state?”

 

The Dey nodded.

 

“Let me, then, make a broad statement of a nonsensical kind, which, in its particular applications may be said to be endless. A throne won by treachery, violence, and bloodshed cannot stand long in—”

 

“Villain!” shouted the Dey.

 

“Nay, I do but jest,” said Baba, with a look of simplicity.

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