We were born, I cannot tell how many leagues apart, in different climates and for different destinies, but we were two men together in the night, and, for a short time, we were very near each other compared with the distance of the stars, or with the distance that separates any two philosophers.
|The Goat-Story Again|
Many who read this will say they know the Mohammedan better than I. They will be right: then let them explain the story of the goats, for I cannot. I will repeat it to save them the trouble of turning back.
A young man of Ain-Yagout, hearing that the Government had carefully planted little cedars on a distant hill, drove his goats fifteen miles to browse upon the same. “Better,” said he, “that I should flourish than the Government, and that my goats should give milk than that these silly little trees should fatten.”
They caught him and brought him before the magistrate, where he confessed what he had done, and even that he had lifted the goats laboriously, one by one, over a high wall to get at the Government trees. But when they asked him what good reason he could give for his conduct, he replied:
“R’aho! It was the will of God. Mektoub, it was written.”
Or words to that effect.
I will admit that when the full lips, the long uncertain eye and the tall forehead of the true Arab met me in these short travels I was always half silenced and half moved to question and to learn. But I saw such Oriental features rarely, for, in spite of the turban and the bernous, they are very rare.
|The Moor|