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Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia with Some Account of the Late Emperor the Late Emperor Theodore, His Country and People by Dr. Henri Blanc
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people obliged to wage constant war against them, he had adopted
the soldier's raiments, as more becoming his altered fortune.
However, after his fall became imminent, he on several occasions
clad himself in gorgeous costumes, in shirts and mantles of rich
brocaded silks, or of gold-embroidered velvet. He did so, I believe,
to influence his people. They knew that he was poor, and though he
hated pomp in his own attire, he desired to impress on his few
remaining followers that though fallen he was still "the King."

During the lifetime of his first wife and for some years afterwards,
Theodore not only led an exemplary life, but forbade the officers
of his household and the chiefs more immediately around him to live
in concubinage. One day in the beginning of 1860 Theodore perceived
in a church a handsome young girl silently praying to her patron,
the Virgin Mary. Struck with her beauty and modesty, he made
inquiries about her, and was informed that she was the only daughter
of Dejatch Oubie, the Prince of Tigre, his former rival, whom he had
dethroned, and who was then his prisoner. He asked for her hand,
and met with a polite refusal. 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
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