A Narrative Of Captivity In Abyssinia With Some Account Of The Late Emperor Theodore, His Country And People By Henry Blanc
- Page 24 of 373 - First - Home
The Young Girl Desired To Retire
Into A Convent, And Devote Herself To The Service Of God.
Theodore
was not a man to be easily thwarted in his desires.
He proposed to
Oubie that he would set him at liberty, only retaining him in his
camp as his "guest," should the Prince prevail on his daughter to
accept his hand. At last Waizero Terunish ("thou art pure") sacrificed
herself for her old father's welfare, and accepted the hand of a
man whom she could not love. This union was unfortunate. Theodore,
to his great disappointment, did not find in his second wife the
fervent affection, the almost blind devotion, of the dead companion
of his youth. Waizero Terunish was proud; she always looked on her
husband as a "parvenu," and took no pains to hide from him her want
of respect and affection. In the afternoon, Theodore, as it had
been his former habit, tired and weary, would retire for rest in
the queen's tent; but he found no cordial welcome there. His wife's
looks were cold and full of pride; and she even went so far as to
receive him without the common courtesy due to her king. One day
when he came in she pretended not to perceive him, did not rise,
and remained silent when he inquired as to her health and welfare;
she held in her hand a book of psalms, and when Theodore asked her
why she did not answer him, she calmly replied, without lifting up
her eyes from the book, "Because I am conversing with a greater and
better man than you - the pious King David."
Theodore sent her to Magdala, together with her new-born son,
Alamayou ("I have seen the world"), and took as his favourite a
widowed lady from Yedjow, named Waizero Tamagno, a rather coarse,
lascivious-looking person, the mother of five children by her former
husband; she soon obtained such an ascendancy over his mind that
he publicly proclaimed "that he had divorced and discarded Terunish,
and that Tamagno should in future be considered by all as the queen."
Soon Waizero Tamagno had numerous rivals; but she was a woman of
tact; and far from complaining, she rather encouraged Theodore in
his debauchery, and always received him with a smile.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 24 of 373
Words from 6172 to 6553
of 102802
