“Mobarek! may you be fortunate!” replied the pacha. “What is this we hear, cadi? there is a goat’s-skin bag, and a girl, that are not known to our justice. Are there secrets like those hid in the well of Kashan—speak! what dirt have you been eating?”
“What shall I say?” replied the cadi; “I am but as dirt; the money is here, and the girl is here. Is the pacha to be troubled with every woman’s noise, or am I come before him with a piece or two of gold—Min Allah—God forbid! Have I not here the money, and seven more purses? Was not the girl visited by the angel of death; and could she appear before your presence lean as a dog in the bazaar? Is she not here? Have I spoken well?”
“It is well said, cadi. Murakhas—you are dismissed.”
The Frank physician was then fined one hundred sequins more; fifty for feeling the pulse, and fifty more for looking at a Turkish woman’s tongue. The young woman was dismissed to the pacha’s harem, the old woman to curse as much as she pleased, and Hudusi with full permission to doubt any thing but the justice of the pacha.
Volume Three--Chapter Two.
“Mashallah! God be praised! we are rid of that fellow and his doubts. I have been thinking, Mustapha, as I smoked the pipe of surmise, and arrived at the ashes of certainty, that a man who had so many doubts, could not be a true believer. I wish I had sent him to the mollahs; we might have been amused with his being impaled, which is a rare object, now-a-days.”
“God is great,” replied Mustapha, “and a stake is a strong argument, and would remove many doubts. But I have an infidel in the court-yard who telleth of strange things. He hath been caught like a wild beast; it is a Frank Galiongi, who hath travelled as far as that son of Shitan, Huckaback; he was found in the streets, overpowered by the forbidden juice, after having beaten many of your highness’s subjects, and the cadi would have administered the bamboo, but he was as a lion, and he scattered the slaves as chaff, until he fell, and could not rise again. I have taken him from the cadi, and brought him here. He speaketh but the Frankish tongue, but the sun who shineth on me knoweth I have been in the Frank country; and Inshallah! please the Lord, I can interpret his meaning.”
“What sort of a man may he be, Mustapha?”