The old Moolah crossed his hands upon his breast, and bowed down his bearded face in reply.
'And did you see much of war and battles in those days, reverend Moolah?' I asked.
'Enough and to spare.'
'Mashallah!' exclaimed Hussein, 'I have seen him carrying six Egyptian heads at once by the top knot, a handful of them all grasped like a cluster of gourds, and I have seen him with four-and-twenty ears all strung like herrings on his ramrod, when Egyptian ears sold as high as ten paras each. Beard of Khalid! I have sent a bushel of them more than once to the tent of Reschid Pasha. Moustapha went hand in hand with the wild Koords in roasting and impaling our prisoners—for what are Egyptians but curs like the Greeks?'
'Curs of a darker hue.'
'True, oh reverend Moolah—though it is said, if thou wishest to please the eye, take a Circassian maid; but if for pleasure and voluptuousness, try an Egyptian one.'
'And did you tire of slaughter or of soldiering?' I asked, not being naturalist enough to ponder long over the last remark—a proverbial one in the East.
'Of neither, though I saw enough of both while under Scherif Bey; but in my youth I was good and pious, and knowing all the Koran and Bible by heart, was styled Hafiz, which meaneth Bible-reader. I became a soldier, and fell into evil ways. I had a vision—a vision, O Frank! such as seldom opens up to mortal eyes,' he continued, pointing upward, while his eyes flashed with a red unearthly glare, and his whole face flushed from his brow to his long white beard; 'and from that hour I was a changed man. I ceased to regard the things of this life, or be solicitous of aught on earth—where I should find food in the morning or rest at night—looking forward only to death as the gate through which I should pass to Paradise. I was once avaricious as a Jew, but now my heart is expanded; all that the sun enlightens would I give in charity, had it been mine. I, who had been often red to the elbows in the blood of slaughtered Greeks and dark Egyptians, now shrank from blood as from a flaming fire; I who had no more conscience than a Bedouin of the desert, and less remorse than an African savage, now see my sins of omission and commission—all my deeds of sorrow and cruelty, performed in the days of my ignorance and trouble, rising like a stupendous column in the very path that leads direct to the place of our abode—to the garden of pleasure—the paradise of the blessed. After the battle of Koniah I was a changed man, yea changed as if the black drop of original sin had been wrung out of my heart.'
'Tell the Frankish officer the story, O Hafiz—my old brother soldier; for though you were but an onbashi and I a captain, I look back with pride to the days when we unsheathed our swords in the same field beneath the green banner of Beschid Pasha,' said Hussein.
'The Frank may but mock me as the Ingleez do all strangers,' said the old Moolah, with a species of growl in his tone, as he glanced uneasily at my soldiers, most of whom had already dropped asleep.