"Friend," said Mansouri, "what are you talking about? do not you see that it has been a mistake?"
"A mistake, indeed!" cried the tailor, "a mistake done on purpose to bring a poor man into trouble. One man laughs at my stupid beard, and makes me believe that I am to make a suit of clothes for him—another takes away the pattern—and a third substitutes a dead man's head for it. Allah! Allah! I have got into the hands of a pretty nest of rogues, a set of ill-begotten knaves!"
Upon which Mansouri placed his hand upon the tailor's mouth, and said, "Say no more, say no more; you are getting deeper into the dirt. Do you know whom you are abusing."
"I know not, nor care not," answered Babadul; "all I know is that whoever gives me a dead man's head for a suit of clothes can only be an infidel dog."
"Do you call God's viceregent upon earth, you old demi-stitching, demi-praying fool, an infidel dog?" exclaimed Mansouri in a rage, which entirely made him forget the precaution he had hitherto maintained concerning his employer. "Are your vile lips to defile the name of him who is the Alem penah, the refuge of the world? What dirt are you eating, what ashes are you heaping on your head? Come, no more words; tell me where the dead man's head is, or I will take yours of in his stead."
Upon hearing this, the tailor stood with his mouth wide open, as if the doors of his understanding had just been unlocked.
"Aman, aman, Mercy, mercy, O Aga!" cried Babadul to Mansouri, "I was ignorant of what I was saying. Who would have thought it? Ass, fool, dolt, that I am, not to have known better. Bismillah! in the name or the Prophet, pray come to my house; your steps will be fortunate, and your slave's head will touch the stars."
"I am in a hurry, a great hurry," said Mansouri. "Where is the head, the head of the Aga of the Janissaries?"
When the tailor heard whose head it had been, and recollected what he and his wife had done with it, his knees knocked under him with fear, and he began to exude from every pore.
"Where is it, indeed?" said he. "Oh! what has come upon us! Oh! what cursed kismet (fate) is this?"