CHAP. VIII. _Conversation with the King--With Shekh Adelan--Interview with the King's Ladies_, &c. &c. We were conducted by Adelan's servant to a very spacious good house belonging to the Shekh himself, having two storeys, a long quarter of a mile from the king's palace. He left a message for us to repose ourselves, and in a day or two to wait upon the king, and that he should send to tell us when we were to come to him. This we resolved to have complied with most exactly; but the very next morning, the 30th of April, there came a servant from the palace to summon us to wait upon the king, which we immediately obeyed. I took with me three servants, black Soliman, Ismael the Turk, and my Greek servant Michael. The palace covers a prodigious deal of ground. It is all of one storey, built of clay, and the floors of earth. The chambers through which we passed were all unfurnished, and seemed as if a great many of them had formerly been destined as barracks for soldiers, of whom I did not see above fifty on guard. The king was in a small room, not twenty feet square, to which we ascended by two short flights of narrow steps. The floor of the room was covered with broad square tiles; over it was laid a Persian carpet, and the walls hung with tapestry of the same country; the whole very well kept, and in good order. The king was sitting upon a matress, laid on the ground, which was likewise covered with a Persian carpet, and round him was a number of cushions of Venetian cloth of gold. His dress did not correspond with this magnificence, for it was nothing but a large, loose shirt of Surat blue cotton cloth, which seemed not to differ from the same worn by his servants, except that, all round the edges of it, the seams were double-stitched with white silk, and likewise round the neck. His head was uncovered; he wore his own short black hair, and was as white in colour as an Arab. He seemed to be a man about thirty-four, his feet were bare, but covered by his shirt. He had a very plebeian countenance, on which was stamped no decided character; I should rather guess him to be a soft, timid, irresolute man. At my coming forward and kissing his hand, he looked at me for a minute as if undetermined what to say. He then asked for an Abyssinian interpreter, as there are many of these about the palace. I said to him in Arabic, "That I apprehended I understood as much of that language as would enable me to answer any question he had to put to me." Upon which he turned to the people that were with him, "Downright Arabic, indeed! You did not learn that language in Habesh?" said he to me. I answered, "No; I have been in Egypt, Turkey, and Arabia, where I learned it; but I have likewise often spoken it in Abyssinia, where Greek, Turkish, and several other languages, were used." He said, "Impossible! he did not think they knew any thing of languages, excepting their own, in Abyssinia."