George Meredith,
The Shaving of Shagpat — The Recital of the Vizier Feshnavat
(1856)
“ Then he stood apart and gazed from Shagpat to the city that now began to move with the morning; elephants and coursers saddled by the gates of the King's palace were visible, and camels blocking the narrow streets, and the markets bustling. Surely though the sun illumined that city, it was as a darkness behind Shagpat singled by the beams of Aklis! ”
George Meredith,
The Shaving of Shagpat — The Recital of the Vizier Feshnavat
(1856)
“ Wah! 'twas a madness of laughter to look upon him. Then on a sudden he cried, addressing himself proudly, "Proclaim Shagpat shaved!" and lo! ere I could divine his purpose and arrest him, he slanted swiftly from the hall, and his heels were twinkling beyond the portals of the palace, and up the street towards the market-place. Awahy! then was I in the abysms of despair, and saw myself no match for the ills that threatened, for he was shouting of Shagpat publicly, proclaiming Shagpat shaved, and by his hand, the hand of Baba Mustapha, in the house of Feshnavat the Vizier ”
George Meredith,
The Shaving of Shagpat — The Recital of the Vizier Feshnavat
(1856)
“ Now on a day, as he paced the felons' prison in a moment of dejection, I was by, and heard him call on the name of Shibli Bagarag as one absent, missing, and to whom he was indebted for divers thwackings, ignominies, and maltreatments: so I said to him, "What of the youth Shibli Bagarag?" And he answered, "This of him, O Vizier: that but for him and my search after him I were now in the centre of the adulations of Shiraz; the good-for-nothing fellow! he whom the Evil One possessed with the idea of arriving at great things,—and the readers of planets! ”
