Acota seated himself, at a signal from the princess, and commenced his
playing, if such it could be called, thrumming violently, and jarring
every chord of his instrument to a tone of such dissonance, that the
attendant girls put their fingers into their ears, and pitied the
beautiful Babe-bi-bobu's bad taste in music.
"Ah! Acota," said the princess, opening upon him all the tenderness of
her large and beaming eyes, "how weary am I of sitting on my cushion,
and seeing fop after fop, fool after fool, dawdle down upon their faces
before me; and, moreover, I am suffocated with perfumes. Strike your
mandolin again louder, beloved of my soul--still louder, that I may be
further relieved of this unwished-for crowd."
Thereupon, Acota seized his mandolin, and made such an unaccountable
confusion of false notes, such a horrid jarring, that all the birds
within one hundred yards shrieked as they fled, and the watchful old
chamberlain, who was always too near the princess, in her opinion, and
never near enough, in his own, cried out, "Yah--yah--baba senna, curses
on his mother, and his mandolin into the bargain!" as his teeth
chattered; and he hastened away, as fast as his obesity would permit
him. The faithful damsels who surrounded the princess could neither
stand it nor sit it any longer--they were in agonies, all their teeth
were set on edge; and at last, when Acota, with one dreadful crash,
broke every string of his instrument, they broke loose from the reins of
duty, and fled in every direction of the garden, leaving the princess
and Acota alone.
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