Vathek was at first enraged, but having been comforted by his mother, the Princess Carathis, who was a Greek and an adept in all the sciences and systems of her country, he issued, at her suggestion, a proclamation promising the liberality for which he was renowned to whoever should decipher the characters on the sabres, and eventually had the gratification of meeting with an old man, who read them as follows: "We were made where everything good is made; we are the least of the wonders of a place where all is wonderful, and deserving the sight of the first potentate on earth." Unfortunately, however, when the old man was ordered the next morning to re-read the inscription, he was then found to interpret it as denouncing: "Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant." "And woe to thee!" cried the caliph, in a burst of indignation, and telling him to take his reward and begone.
II.--The Caliph's Strange Adventures
It was not long before Vathek discovered abundant reason for regretting his precipitation. He plainly perceived that the characters on the sabres changed every day; and the anxiety caused by his failure to decipher them, or to read anything from the stars, brought on a fever, which deprived him of his appetite, and tormented him with an absolutely insatiable thirst. From this distress he was at length delivered by a meeting with the stranger, who cured him by giving him to drink of a phial of red and yellow mixture. But when this insolent person, at a banquet given in his honour, burst into shouts of laughter on being asked to declare of what drugs the salutary liquor had been compounded, and from what place the sabres had come, Vathek kicked him from the steps, and, repeating the blow, persisted with such assiduity as incited all present to follow his example. The stranger collected into a ball, rolled out of the palace, followed by Vathek, the court, and the whole city, and, after passing through all the public places, rolled onwards to the Plain of Catoul, traversed the valley at the foot of the mountain of the Four Fountains, and bounded into the chasm formed there by the continual fall of the waters.
Vathek would have followed the perfidious giaour had not an invisible agency arrested his progress and that of the multitude; and he was so much struck by the whole circumstance that he ordered his tents to be pitched on the very edge of the precipice. After keeping several vigils there, he was accosted one night by the voice of the giaour, who amid the darkness caused by a total eclipse of the moon and the stars, offered to bring him to the palace of subterranean fire, where he should behold the treasures which the stars had promised him, and the talismans that control the world, if he would abjure Mohammed, adore the terrestrial influences, and satiate the stranger's thirst with the blood of fifty of the most beautiful Samarahite boys.
The unhappy caliph lavished his promises in the utmost profusion, and by arranging for the celebration near the chasm of some juvenile sports, which were not concluded till twilight, was able to make the direful libation. As the boys came up one by one to receive their prizes, he pushed them into the gulf, the dreadful device being executed with so much dexterity that the boy who was approaching him remained unconscious of the fate of his forerunner.
The popular tumult roused by this atrocity having been appeased by the princess, who possessed the most consummate skill in the art of persuasion, there was offered on the tower a burnt sacrifice to the infernal deities, the main ingredients of which were mummies, rhinoceros' horns, oil of the most venomous serpents, various aromatic woods, and one hundred and forty of the caliph's most faithful subjects. These preliminaries having been settled, a parchment was discovered, in which Vathek was thanked for his burnt offering, and told to set forth with a magnificent retinue for Istakar, where he would receive the diadem of Gian Ben Gian, the talismans of Soliman, and the treasures of the pre-Adamite sultans. But he was warned not to enter any dwelling on his route.
Vathek and the cavalcade set out, and for three days all went well. But on the fourth a storm burst upon them, the frightful roar of wild beasts resounded at a distance, and they soon perceived in the forest glaring eyes that could only belong to devils or tigers. Fire destroyed their provisions, and they would have starved had not two dwarfs, who dwelt as hermits on the top of some rocks, received divine intimation of their plight and revealed it to their emir, Fakreddin. The dwarfs were entertained, caressed, and seated with great ceremony on little cushions of state. But they clambered up the sides of the caliph's seat, and, placing themselves each on one of his shoulders, began to whisper prayers in his ears; and his patience was almost exhausted when the acclamations of the troops announced the approach of Fakreddin. He hastened to their assistance, but being punctiliously religious and likewise a great dealer in compliments, he made an harangue five times more prolix and insipid than his harbingers had already delivered.
At length, however, all got in motion, and they descended from the heights to the valley by the large steps which the emir had cut in the rocks, and reached a building of hewn stone overspread by palm-trees and crowned with nine domes. Beneath one of these domes the caliph was entertained with excellent sherbet, with sweetbreads stewed in milk of almonds, and other delicacies of which he was amazingly fond.
But, unfortunately, the sight of the emir's young daughter tempted the prophet's vice-regent to violate the rites of hospitality. Vathek fell violently in love with Nouronihar, who was sprightly as an antelope and full of wanton gaiety; and though she was contracted to her cousin and dearly beloved companion Gulchenrouz, he demanded her hand from Fakreddin, who, rather than force his daughter to break her affiances, presented his sabre to Vathek. "Strike your unhappy host," he said. "He has lived long enough if he sees the prophet's vice-regent violate the rites of hospitality." Nouronihar fell down in a swoon, and of this swoon the emir took advantage to carry out a scheme which should deliver him from his difficulties. He gave out that both the children had died from the effect of the caliph's glances, and, having administered to them a narcotic powder that would give them the appearance of death for three days, had them conveyed away to the shores of a desolate lake, where, attended by the dwarfs, they were put upon a meagre diet and told that they were in the other world, expiating the little faults of which their love was the cause.
But Nouronihar, remembering a dream in which she was told that she was destined to be the caliph's wife, and thereby to possess the carbuncle of Giamsched, and the treasures of the pre-Adamite sultans, indulged doubts on the mode of her being, and scarcely could believe that she was dead. She rose one morning while all were asleep, and having wandered some distance from the lake, discovered that she knew the district.
This fact, and a meeting with Vathek, convinced her that she was alive, and, submitting to the caliph's embraces, she consented to become his bride, and to go with him to the subterranean palace.
III.--The Palace of Subterranean Fire
When Princess Carathis heard of the dissolute conduct of her son she sent for Morakanabad.
"Let me expire in flames," she cried.
Having said this, she whirled herself round in a magical way, striking poor Morakanabad in such a way as caused him to recoil. Then she ordered her great camel, Aboufaki, to be brought, and, attended by her two hideous and one-eyed negresses, Nerkes and Cafour, set out to surprise the lovers. She burst in upon them, foaming with indignation, and said to Vathek: "Free thyself from the arms of this paltry doxy; drown her in the water before me, and instantly follow my guidance." But Vathek replied civilly, but decisively, that he was taking Nouronihar with him; and the princess, having heard her declare that she would follow him beyond the Kaf in the land of the Afrits, was appeased, and pronounced Nouronihar a girl of both courage and science.