been a
sinecure, and he had chiefly devoted his leisure to "drawing" pupils who
were too late for college chapel. The sight of a lady of his
acquaintance in the streets had at all times been alarming enough to
drive him into a shop or up a lane, and he had not survived the creation
of the first batch of married fellows. How he had got into this
thoroughly wrong paradise was a mystery which he made no attempt to
explain. "A nice place this, eh?" he said to me. "Nice gardens; remind
me of Magdalene a good deal. It seems, however, to be decidedly rather
gay just now; don't you think so? Commemoration week, perhaps. A great
many young ladies up, certainly; a good deal of cup drunk in the gardens
too. I always did prefer to go down in Commemoration week, myself; never
was a dancing man. There is a great deal of dancing here, but the young
ladies dance alone, rather like what is called the ballet, I believe, at
the opera. I must say the young persons are a little forward; a little
embarrassing it is to be alone here, especially as I have forgotten a
good deal of my Arabic. Don't you think, my dear fellow, you and I could
manage to give them the slip? Run away from them, eh?" He uttered a
timid little chuckle, and at that moment an innumerable host of houris
began a ballet d'action illustrative of a series of events in the career
of the Prophet. It was obvious that my poor uncomplaining old friend was
really very miserable. The "thornless loto trees" were all thorny to
him, and the "tal'h trees with piles of fruit, the outspread shade, and
water outpoured" could not comfort him in his really very natural
shyness. A happy thought occurred to me. In early and credulous youth I
had studied the works of Cornelius Agrippa and Petrus de Abano. Their
lessons, which had not hitherto been of much practical service, recurred
to my mind. Stooping down, I drew a circle round myself and my old
friend in the fragrant white blossoms which were strewn so thick that
they quite hid the grass. This circle I fortified by the usual signs
employed, as Benvenuto Cellini tells us, in the conjuration of evil
spirits. I then proceeded to utter one of the common forms of exorcism.
Instantly the myriad houris assumed the forms of irritated demons; the
smoke from the uncounted narghiles burned thick and black; the cries of
the frustrated ginns, who were no better than they should be, rang wildly
in our ears; the palm-trees shook beneath