Then followed the bear, who had been
pressed to the bales of gingerbread and was covered all over with it,
and looked but uncouthly; and the monkey with a doll in every paw, and
his pouches so crammed with sugar-plumbs that they hung on each side of
him, and trailed on the ground behind like the duchess of ----'s
beautiful breasts. Solomon, however, gave small attention to this
procession, being caught with the charms of the lovely Pissimissi: he
immediately began the song of songs extempore; and what he had seen--I
mean, all that came out of the humming-bird's throat had made such a
jumble in his ideas, that there was nothing so unlike to which he did
not compare all Pissimissi's beauties. As he sung his canticles too
to no tune, and god knows had but a bad voice, they were far from
comforting Pissimissi: the elephant had torn her best bib and apron, and
she cried and roared, and kept such a squalling, that though Solomon
carried her in his arms, and showed her all the fine things in the
temple, there was no pacifying her. The queen of Sheba, who was playing
at backgammon with the high-priest, and who came every October to
converse with Solomon, though she did not understand a word of Hebrew,
hearing the noise, came running out of her dressing-room; and seeing the
king with a squalling child in his arms, asked him peevishly, if it
became his reputed wisdom to expose himself with his bastards to all the
court? Solomon, instead of replying, kept singing, "We have a little
sister, and she has no breasts;" which so provoked the Sheban princess,
that happening to have one of the dice-boxes in her hand, she without
any ceremony threw it at his head.
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