"Why, effendi?"
"Because, in that case, the liquid would become as black as the holy Kaaba."
"But she did not appear?"
"This is an unlucky day, my son."
"Why so for me, if not for others? I never omit to wash and pray; and yesterday, O hakim, you showed strange things to the Franks, filling all their khans and coffee-houses with wonder."
"True; but go. Thou art one of the faithful. To the infidels all days are alike," replied the hakim, with a very unmistakable scowl at Jolicoeur and Baudeuf. "Doth not the Prophet say, 'Their works are like unto vapour in a plain, which the traveller thinketh to be water, until when he cometh thereto he findeth it to be nothing?'"
"Allah kerim!" said the onbashi, putting his right hand to his forehead, his mouth, and his heart, and stalking solemnly away.
Jolicoeur was pressing forward to summon his friend Sophie, no doubt, or perhaps some other gay damsel, when the hakim, who evidently disliked his scoffing smile and general bearing, ignored his presence, and said to me—
"Effendi, in what can I serve you?"
I felt the blood rush to my head, and in a whisper I mentioned to him Louisa Loftus. I was loth that my fast companions should hear her name, and make, perhaps, a jest of it. The hakim's fee was, I have said, ten piastres; but as I gave him above a hundred—or equal to a guinea sterling—there were no words to express his thanks in Egyptian or Turkish; he could only mutter, again and again—