tle good advice,
she is still incorrigible. She will, once more, have nothing to do with
the words _dois_ and _devoir_. When asked if she knows what he is and
what _she_ is, she answers with perfect _aplomb_, "What we are? You are
powerful, and I am pretty; so we are quite on an equality." In the most
painfully confidential and at the same time quite decent manner, she
asks him what he can possibly do with five hundred wives? and, still
more intolerably, tells him that she likes his looks, and has already
loved people who were not worth him. The horror with which this Turkish
soldan, himself so full of sin, ejaculates, "Vous _avez_ aime?" may be
easily imagined, and again she simply puts him to flight. When he gets
over it a little, he sends Delia to negotiate. But Roxelane tells the
go-between to stay to supper, declaring that she herself does not feel
inclined for a _tete-a-tete_ yet, and finally sends him off with this
obliging predecessor and substitute, presenting her with the legendary
handkerchief, which she has actually borrowed from the guileless
Padishah. There is some, but not too much more of it; there can but be
one end; and as he takes her to the Mosque to make her legitimate
Sultana, quite contrary to proper Mussulman usage, he says to himself,
"Is it really possible that a little _retrousse_ nose should upset the
laws of an empire?" Probably, though Marmontel does not say so, he
looked down at the said nose, as he communed with himself, and decided
that cause and effect were not unworthy of each other. There is hardly a
righter and better hit-off tale of the kind, even in French.

[Sidenote: _The Four Flasks._]

"The Four Flasks" or "The Adventures of Alcidonis of Megara," a sort of
outside fairy tale, is good, but not quite so good as either of the
former. Alcidonis has a fairy protectress, if not exactly godmother, who
gives him the flasks in question to use in amatory adventures. One, with
purple liquor in it, sets the drinker in full tide of passion; the
second (rose-coloured) causes a sort of flirtation; the third (blue)
leads to sentimental and moderate affection; and the last (pure white)
recovers the experimenter from the effects of any of the others. He
tries all, and all but the last are unsatisfactory, though, much as in
the case of Alcibiades and Glicerie, the blue has a second chance, the
results of which are not revealed. This is the least important of the
group, but is well told.

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