{"id":"01KG8AKXG4V4QSARNGMM75YH1R","cid":"bafkreifszvt3n3xz6muwz65mmywbjnhoqfjv6qattndpc5x5l6ydno6qne","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":8689,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:18.539Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 3","source_file":"01KG89J1HYC04JWXEK48P07WPK","start_line":8614,"text":"precedence became confused, and was very hard to restore.\r\n\r\nAt intervals, some one of the wives was weeded out, to the no small\r\ndelight of the remainder; but to their equal vexation her place would\r\nsoon after be supplied by some beautiful stranger; who assuming the\r\ndenomination of the vacated Night of the Moon, thenceforth commenced\r\nher monthly revolutions in the king’s infallible calendar.\r\n\r\nIn constant attendance, was a band of old men; woe-begone, thin of leg,\r\nand puny of frame; whose grateful task it was, to tarry in the garden\r\nof Donjalolo’s delights, without ever touching the roses. Along with\r\ninnumerable other duties, they were perpetually kept coming and going\r\nupon ten thousand errands; for they had it in strict charge to obey the\r\nslightest behests of the damsels; and with all imaginable expedition to\r\nrun, fly, swim, or dissolve into impalpable air, at the shortest\r\npossible notice.\r\n\r\nSo laborious their avocations, that none could discharge them for more\r\nthan a twelvemonth, at the end of that period giving up the ghost out\r\nof pure exhaustion of the locomotive apparatus. It was this constant\r\ndrain upon the stock of masculine old age in the glen, that so\r\nbethinned its small population of gray-beards and hoary-heads. And any\r\nold man hitherto exempted, who happened to receive a summons to repair\r\nto the palace, and there wait the pleasure of the king: this\r\nunfortunate, at once suspecting his doom, put his arbor in order; oiled\r\nand suppled his joints; took a long farewell of his friends; selected\r\nhis burial-place; and going resigned to his fate, in due time expired\r\nlike the rest.\r\n\r\nHad any one of them cast about for some alleviating circumstance, he\r\nmight possibly have derived some little consolation from the thought,\r\nthat though a slave to the whims of thirty princesses, he was\r\nnevertheless one of their guardians, and as such, he might ingeniously\r\nhave concluded, their superior. But small consolation this. For the\r\ndamsels were as blithe as larks, more playful than kittens; never\r\nlooking sad and sentimental, projecting clandestine escapes. But\r\nsupplied with the thirtieth part of all that Aspasia could desire;\r\nglorying in being the spouses of a king; nor in the remotest degree\r\nanxious about eventual dowers; they were care-free, content, and\r\nrejoicing, as the rays of the morning.\r\n\r\nPoor old men, then; it would be hard to distill out of your fate, one\r\ndrop of the balm of consolation. For, commissioned to watch over those\r\nwho forever kept you on the trot, affording you no time to hunt up\r\npeccadilloes; was not this circumstance an aggravation of hard times? a\r\nsharpening and edge-giving to the steel in your souls?\r\n\r\nBut much yet remains unsaid.\r\n\r\nTo dwell no more upon the eternal wear-and-tear incident to these\r\nattenuated old warders, they were intensely hated by the damsels.\r\nInasmuch, as it was archly opined, for what ulterior purposes they were\r\nretained.\r\n\r\nNightly couching, on guard, round the seraglio, like fangless old\r\nbronze dragons round a fountain enchanted, the old men ever and anon\r\ncried out mightily, by reason of sore pinches and scratches received in\r\nthe dark: And tri-trebly-tri-triply girt about as he was, Donjalolo\r\nhimself started from his slumbers, raced round and round through his\r\nten thousand corridors; at last bursting all dizzy among his\r\ntwenty-nine queens, to see what under the seventh-heavens was the\r\nmatter. When, lo and behold! there lay the innocents all sound asleep;\r\nthe dragons moaning over their mysterious bruises.\r\n\r\nAh me! his harem, like all large families, was the delight and the\r\ntorment of the days and nights of Donjalolo.\r\n\r\nAnd in one special matter was he either eminently miserable, or\r\notherwise: for all his multiplicity of wives, he had never an heir. Not\r\nhis, the proud paternal glance of the Grand Turk Solyman, looking round\r\nupon a hundred sons, all bone of his bone, and squinting with his\r\nsquint.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 3"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJW7YM6JJB16A28S97ZE6","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1HYC04JWXEK48P07WPK","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKXG4C95CCGF9Z24S39Q4","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:19.972Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:32.257Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}