When away on a long sporting-excursion, he is invariably accompanied by one of these bands.
Were it not for the running attendants in scarlet and gold, and the crimson-dyed [D] tail of his horse, no one would take the slim, swarthy old gentleman in black frock-coat, riding slowly through the streets, and beaming benignly through a huge pair of spectacles, for the great Shah-in-Shah himself.

Yet he is stern and pitiless enough when necessary, as many of the Court officials can vouch for.

But few have escaped the bastinado at one time or another; but in Persia this is not considered an indignity, even by the highest in the land.

The stick is painful, certainly, but not a disgrace in this strange country.
Nasr-oo-din has three legal wives, and an unlimited number of concubines.

Of the former, the head wife, Shuku-Es-Sultana, is his own cousin and the great-granddaughter of the celebrated Fatti-Ali-Shah, whose family was so large that, at the time of his death, one hundred and twenty of his descendants were still living.