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. One day she
said to her fickle lord, who felt rather astonished at her forbearance,
"Why should I be jealous? I know you love but me; what is it if you
stoop now and then to pick up some flowers, to beautify them by
your breath?"

Although Theodore had several children, Alamayou is the only
legitimate one. The eldest, a lad of about twenty-two, called Prince
Meshisha, is a big, idle, lazy fellow. Though at Zage, Theodore