No.
There the gazelle, that so seldom-found dish, so richly dressed and savory, there it is set and there it stays, stays settled; and the king (He of Cappadoce, I mean) eats of it, head, haunch, harslet, he crunches the brown crisp crackled skin and sucks the dainty pettitoes and the richly yielding marrow-bones. Now and then a kinsman steals a look, but that is all he is suffered to steal. Others may enjoy the smell. Only the king enjoys the meat. He leaves perhaps a drop or two of sauce, a spot or so of grease. Only a spot or so. Gazelle is too good to be greasy.
Not even the greatly-welcomed foreign guest has gotten so much as a drachm or scruple of the costly sauce, though in all other things the foreign guest (not I, you may be assured) is greatly honored. Not for a moment does the king so much as allude to the gazelle, in fact — what gazelle? the gazelle, running more swiftly even than Time, a creature living nine times the lifespan of a corby, the corby itself living nine times the lifespan of a man (so sayeth that great physician Chiron the Centaur): a gazelle: the King had consumed it in a quarter of an hour — in fact … what gazelle? And scarcely for a moment does the king fail to praise the foreign guest who has travelled hither, a most learned alchymist and natural philosopher, one who has studied the chameleon and the crocodile and knows the uses of the alembic as another man might know the uses of … well, any commonplace thing. A comb. An oil scraper in the baths.
Nor would the Cappadocian King in the length of a single meal, the entire durance of it, even once leave the table pleading (or leaving assumed) a corporal necessity during which absence let a still-fearful guest suspect the King took an antidote against a slow-acting venom: no. Far from it. See him by dulcet gesture as one who takes for granted a thing for which indulgence will be allowed; a movement of the brows and an exquisitely molded moue of the mouth, receive back the same cup before it could be quite emptied and hold the same so his favored small son might sip from it and then and not before then with lovely gratitude send the cup back and by and by, not that one would see, but one would hear the Cappadocian King and his dandelled son relieve their bladders into a traditionally golden basin held by some thrall on bended knees.
Meanwhile the Queen, wearing a robe of horrible richness, was sitting in the Queen’s place, and the King sometimes spoke to her, as protocol — not to say good manners — required. Good manners were required. Perhaps not more. She made no slightest answer nor regarded him her lord at all nor changed her face, but continued eating; the King never seemed actually to have asked her a question and hence never required an answer. The general meal may have been heavy with such items as a roast brawn with a candied quince atween its white tushes, and a broiled mutton with gilded horns (the gazelle did not count; in fact — what gazelle?), but portions of these did not appear on the Queen’s silver plate (the King’s were of gold); perhaps she found them too heavy. Principally on her plate appeared small birds: francolins, peredrix, the delicate ortolan, dove-squabs farced with grated chestnuts and pistuquim and chopped figs or jujubes; and very neatly indeed she broke their tiny bones or pulled them from their softened spines and sockets. She ate steadily, she partook copious amounts of the rich, sweet flawns with a jeweled spoon, and of pasties and of other pastries; but she had gained no flesh, the flesh had melted away from beneath her sallow skin a long time ago, and the skin hung or rested loosely, loosely, upon the skull in flaps and folds. She was very much older than the King, it was evident, and could hardly have been the Mother of the young child a sitting in his lap. But whom the King married and by marriage made his Queen and who was the Mother of his children were of clean different things. The several men at the table who so greatly resembled the King spoke (seldom) to the King, but spoke him as to one’s Father, which was curious indeed, and (seldom) to the Queen, and as to one’s Mother, which was most curious: some appeared anxious and haggard, and some resigned … and haggard: but as for age and appearance they might have been his older brothers. Or, as I have said, his uncles. Very curious.
It must not be thought that the King himself ate no dainties, and merely subsisted on meat, like a Hun; far from it. I recall it being mentioned that he was very fond of certain little cakes made of the finest sifted wheat flour, moiled in a mortar with oil of opium; also that he much liked small cheese tarts, the fillings of which were confected out of mothers’ milk, richer than that of ewes.
She wore much gold — rings almost as large as armils and armils almost as large as greaves and a coronet only slightly smaller than a crown. One might have thought her the Queen Dowager, did not the King Himself say, sometimes, something like this: “The weather has been beautiful, my wife, and I hope that you have enjoyed it much.” The Queen’s reply was to quarter a fricaseed peacock/pullet with her fingers and then to wipe her fingers on some bits of mealy bread and then to give the bits of bread to her small white doggies of the Malta breed. She seemed old, quite, quite old, this Queen; perhaps it was a marriage pro forma, a marriage for reasons of state; but, yet — One wondered, too, at the source of the gold. Had the King robbed it from the Arimaspeans or from shroffs or griffins or projected it by alchymical means in his own well-famed elaboratory or earned it by the more simple way of debasing his own currency?
At night the same small child (possibly the one named Ozymandias, who but then that King of the Cappadocians had had so many sons and they all had names, unlike those of a certain not very philoprogenitive King of Phrygia who merely gave his sons numbers), at night the same small child … not ever once out of the guest’s eyes for a moment long enough for a drop of wine to distill its way down the cup’s smooth sides — would by indulgence spend the night sleeping in the guest traveler’s tent upon a scarlet fleece after having lisped him a lullaby, perhaps the one in the Chrestomathy beginning
Though perhaps not. It would have been a rare guest not by now charmed out of all thoughts of suspicion. I would be such a rare one and would not have been there; had I ever been asked? Yes. The night would pass and the day and even it might be the month. Business would be done (one would not hurry business) and the guest would agree to sell his secret and … the King of Cappadocea after all not being able to guarantee the safety and security of guest and gear outside his own borders, see finally the guest philosopher and occymist accept a parchment of accompt scaled with several sundry seals, guaranteeing payment of … say … an hundred thousand golden solids to be paid over at the Agency of the Kingdom of Cappadocea in Mickelgarth, Byzantinope, that great city. And see (I would not see, merely I have heard) the traveler-alchemist in full good health and let him even travel a day’s march past the last of the Marches of Cappadocea and then see him well suddenly part his lips a bit puzzled and roll a bit his eyes bemused and fall silently off his horse or camel, and dead by the time he struck upon the foreign soil. And see the caravan-men, rather bored than otherwise, remove the rich gifts and the parchment of accompt and even the very clothing upon the immediately-buried body (immediately buried except for the head, of course, that being brought back to Cappadocea, for the King to look upon — once — after which it was laid upon an ant-hill until it was in such cleanly state to be set atop the Tower of Skulls; each Eastern King having his own Tower of Skulls, chiefly for the amusement and instruction of the children, but often for the instruction of others: principally that of the councillors, ministers, and wives of the aforesaid Kings of the East; and now and then their own heads … but this is already a sufficiently long digression ….)