REALMAH’S GREAT ENEMY, BRISHEE-BRASHEE-VAH.

In our moral likings and dislikings there are as many odd fancies and peculiarities as in our physical likings; and we all know in physical matters how peculiar these likings are. One man is attracted by black hair in his beloved, another by auburn, another by red. The countenance which is absolutely repulsive to one, is fearfully attractive to another. There are even some people to whom obliquity of vision on the part of their beloved is delightful.

But it has often passed unobserved that there are the same invincible likings and dislikings as regards the moral qualities. One man can endure anything but cruelty in those he loves. Another has a positive hatred for the puritanical virtues.[26] A third, and such a man was Hamlet, adores justice, and cannot bear the unjust and passionate man:

“Give me that man That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee, Horatio;”

while again there are others who are very tolerant of passion and injustice, but cannot abide small, narrow-minded equitable priggishness.

Footnote 26:

“I have known distinguished fathers and mothers in our Christian Israel, whose presence was like mildew upon flowers, and who sent you away with the feeling of having been defrauded of half your vital electricity.” The writer of the above, an American named Henry James, would not be likely to admire much even the virtues of Puritanism.

Now Realmah, great as he was, was not exempt from these prejudices in his moral likings and dislikings. You might oppose him in council, and he would like you just the same. You might say injurious things against him, and he would forgive you, merely observing that he was sorry that you did not understand him. You might even conspire against him, and he would readily pardon you, as we have seen. But he was unspeakably bitter against the men who promoted false rumours. He was wont to say that these false rumours are the great difficulty of government, and that all the skill in the world cannot quite meet and dissipate them. Here it may be remarked how very difficult it must have been before printing had been invented for a government to check these false rumours. Much of what we now call history consists perhaps of the lightest, falsest, and most unauthorized sayings of the most gossiping of mankind.

Realmah would lose all his usual calmness and dignity when inveighing against the men who made and propagated false rumours. Indeed he was in the habit of saying that _Brishee-Brashee-Vah_, which meant in their language _The Lord of False Gabbling_, was the only enemy he never had conquered, and could never hope to conquer.

Of the rumours that made Realmah so angry, some were of this kind.--The Varnah, who delighted in household arrangement, and who seldom went out of doors, was ill. The court physician recommended that Her Loftiness should take more air. Realmah, entering her apartments one day, remarked before her and her women--“We must take the open air a great deal this summer, my Varnah; that is the way to meet your enemy. He is not to be battled with in the house.”

That simple speech led to a report, which was believed throughout Abibah, that the King would take the field at the head of thirty thousand men for a summer campaign against the Bibraskas; and absolutely, ambassadors arrived from the Bibraskas to propitiate the wrath of so great a monarch.

Realmah, when he addressed the Varnah, had pointed to an opening in the wall which looked towards the east, and the Bibraskas were the only tribe in that direction who did not admit the suzerainty of Realmah.

The King strove to trace the origin and growth of this report; and, finding that one of the Varnah’s women had repeated his words, with sundry additions, to her lover, was with difficulty persuaded from ordering her to be strangled. The great and good-natured King was never known to have been so fierce as upon this occasion, nor to inveigh so loudly against Brishee-Brashee-Vah, whom he believed to be the chief god of evil in this lower world.

Corresponding with his hatred of Brishee-Brashee-Vah was Realmah’s love for true intelligence. No man, to use an expression of Talleyrand’s, was more “avid of facts.” He did not care for the facts being apparently important: if they were trivial, but true, he valued them. He desired to know who in Abibah loved whom, who hated whom, who was about to marry whom. He did not despise gossip, if gossip were but based upon facts.

The Varnah and Talora, with the tact of women, discovered this, and, when they wanted him to do anything in household matters, took care to please him first by giving him intelligence that he could rely upon.

His foster-brother, Omki, vexed him much by bringing him rumours and suspicions of all kinds; but there was a great affection between Realmah and Omki, and the King endured from his foster-brother what he would not have borne from any other man.

If Realmah was desirous to know the truth about all manner of minor matters, it may be imagined how anxious he was to have sound intelligence about serious things connected with his government, and, above all, to have exact accounts of the movements of the men of the North.

For this purpose he posted men, upon whose vigilance and judgment he could thoroughly rely, at all the passes of that part of the country which is now called the Vorarlberg.

The instructions he gave to these men were very characteristic of him. He said, “Do not bring me your suspicions; do not bring me even your thoughts; do not worry me with rumours: I will only act upon ascertained facts.

“You all know the story of Kalvi the Timid, who lived in the woods. It was always ‘Wolves, wolves!’ with poor Kalvi. Even his wives ceased to be frightened by him. At last, the wolves did come; and what said the wives? ‘Those are not the howlings of real wolves; but the boys, poor Kalvi, are playing their wicked jokes upon you, as usual; and we will not shut the door.’

“My people must not liken me to Kalvi the Timid. Do not bring me anything in the way of intelligence that you have not seen with your own eyes. There is always time enough. For once that we unwisely delay to act, we act prematurely one hundred times. Be wise; and do not disturb your king until the real moment for action comes.”