It was four o'clock in the afternoon when a loud noise of drums, , and other instruments of African origin at the end of the principal street. In all corners of the market-place the was redoubled. Half a day of cries and wrestling had neither weakened the voices nor broken the limbs of these traders. A large number of slaves still remained to be sold. The traders disputed over the lots with an of which the London Exchange would give but an imperfect idea, even on a day when stocks were rising.  
All business was stopped, and the criers took their breath as soon as the concert commenced.
 
The King of Kazounde, Moini Loungga, had come to honor the great "lakoni" with a visit. A numerous train of women, officers, soldiers and slaves followed him. Alvez and some other traders went to meet him, and naturally exaggerated the attention which this crowned particularly enjoyed.
 
Moini Loungga was carried in an old palanquin, and , not without the aid of a dozen arms, in the center of the large square.
 
This king was fifty years old, but he looked eighty. Imagine a monkey who had reached extreme old age; on his head a sort of crown, with leopard's claws, dyed red, and enlarged by tufts of whitish hair; this was the crown of the sovereigns of Kazounde. From his waist hung two petticoats made of leather, with pearls, and harder than a blacksmith's . He had on his breast a quantity of which bore witness to the ancient nobility of the king; and, to believe him, the of Moini Loungga was lost in the night of time. On the ankles, wrists and arms of his , of leather were rolled, and he wore a pair of domestic shoes with yellow tops, which Alvez had presented him with about twenty years before.
 
His majesty carried in his left hand a large stick with a plated knob, and in his right a small broom to drive away flies, the handle of which was enriched with pearls.
 
Over his head was carried one of those old patched umbrellas, which seemed to have been cut out of a harlequin's dress.
 
On the 's neck and on his nose were the magnifying glass and the spectacles which had caused Cousin Benedict so much trouble. They had been hidden in Bat's pocket.
 
Such is the portrait of his negro majesty, who made the country tremble in a of a hundred miles.
 
Moini Loungga, from the fact of occupying a throne, pretended to be of origin, and had any of his subjects doubted the fact, he would have sent them into another world to discover it. He said that, being of a divine essence, he was not subject to terrestrial laws. If he ate, it was because he wished to do so; if he drank, it was because it gave him pleasure. It was impossible for him to drink any more. His ministers and his officers, all drunkards, would have passed before him for sober men.
 
The court was alcoholized to the last chief, and strong beer, cider, and, above all, a certain drink which Alvez furnished in .
 
Moini Loungga counted in his harem wives of all ages and of all kinds.
The larger part of them accompanied him in this visit to the "lakoni."
Moini, the first, according to date, was a vixen of forty years, of royal blood, like her colleagues. She wore a bright tartan, a straw petticoat embroidered with pearls, and necklaces wherever she could put them. Her hair was dressed so as to make an enormous framework on her little head. She was, in fact, a monster.
 
The other wives, who were either the cousins or the sisters of the king, were less richly dressed, but much younger. They walked behind her, ready to fulfil, at a sign from their master, their duties as human furniture. These unfortunate beings were really nothing else. If the king wished to sit down, two of these women toward the earth and served him for a chair, while his feet rested on the bodies of some others, as if on an ebony carpet.
 
In Moini Loungga's came his officers, his captains, and his magicians.
 
A thing about these , who staggered like their master, was that each lacked a part of his body—one an ear, another an eye, this one the nose, that one the hand. Not one was whole. That is because they apply only two kinds of punishment in Kazounde—mutilation or death—all at the caprice of the king. For the least fault, some , and the most cruelly punished are those whose ears are cut off, because they can no longer wear rings in their ears.
 
The captains of the kilolos, governors of districts, or named for four years, wore hats of zebra skin and red vests for their whole uniform. Their hands long palm , steeped at one end with charmed drugs.
 
As to the soldiers, they had for offensive and weapons, bows, of which the wood, twined with the cord, was ornamented with fringes; knives, with a serpent's tongue; broad and long lances; shields of palm wood, decorated in style. For what there was of uniform, properly so called, it cost his majesty's absolutely nothing.
 
Finally, the kind's cortege comprised, in the last place, the court magicians and the instrumentalists.
 
The sorcerers, the "mganngas," are the doctors of the country. These savages attach an absolute faith to services, to incantations, to the fetiches, clay figures stained with white and red, representing fantastic animals or figures of men and women cut out of whole wood. For the rest, those magicians were not less mutilated than the other courtiers, and doubtless the monarch paid them in this way for the cures that did not succeed.
 
The instrumentalists, men or women, made sharp whizz, noisy drums sound or under small sticks terminated by a caoutchouc ball, "marimehas," kinds of dulcimers formed of two rows of of various dimensions—the whole very for any one who does not possess a pair of African ears.
 
Above this crowd, which composed the royal cortege, waved some flags and standards, then at the ends of spears the of the rival chiefs whom Moini Loungga had .
 
When the king had quitted his palanquin, acclamations burst from all sides. The soldiers of the discharged their old guns, the low of which were but little louder than the vociferations of the crowd. The overseers, after rubbing their black noses with cinnabar powder, which they carried in a sack, bowed to the ground. Then Alvez, advancing in his turn, handed the king a supply of fresh tobacco—"soothing herb," as they call it in the country. Moini Loungga had great need of being , for he was, they did not know why, in a very bad humor.
 
At the same time Alvez, Coimbra, Ibn Hamis, and the Arab traders, or mongrels, came to pay their court to the powerful sovereign of Kazounde. "Marhaba," said the Arabs, which is their word of welcome in the language of Central Africa. Others clapped their hands and bowed to the ground. Some daubed themselves with mud, and gave signs of the greatest servility to this majesty.
 
Moini Loungga hardly looked at all these people, and walked, keeping his limbs apart, as if the ground were rolling and pitching. He walked in this manner, or rather he rolled in the midst of waves of slaves, and if the traders feared that he might take a notion to some of the prisoners to himself, the latter would no less falling into the power of such a brute.
 
Negoro had not left Alvez for a moment, and in his company presented his to the king. Both in the native language, if, however, that word "" can be used of a conversation in which Moini Loungga only took part by monosyl............