"There is, Sire, no outward evidences of lacking wit. I would have him speak."
"He is the Janizary, Captain Ballaban," whispered the Vizier. "You will observe that the wit is clean gone from him. Tell us your story, Ballaban, or whoever you are."
"I beg the favor of your excellency, your lordship, Sire; for, since you deny that you are the king of the Turks, I know not what title to give to your authority. I am your prisoner. I fought on the Byzantine galley as Jesu gave me strength, but was unfortunate enough to fall overboard, and fortunate enough to avoid capture by the Turkish boats, as I dived beneath them, or rested myself below their sterns until I reached the shore. But as heaven willed it, I landed below the walls of the city. I was altogether weaponless, having shuffled off my armor that I might swim—and altogether blown by my effort—or, by the bones of Abraham! I had never been captured by the cowardly slaves you sent. I ask only the treatment of an honorable enemy."
"By the beard of the Prophet!" exclaimed Mahomet, "if he were a Christian I would give him liberty for the valor of his speech. Some of the spirit of our gallant Ballaban is still left in him. The witches could not take the great heart out of him, though they stole away his wits. What say you, Sage Murta?" The physician replied, knitting his brows and stroking his chin—
"The Padishah is wise. The man is mad. But since his heart is not touched by the demon, but only his memory erased and his imagination distorted, my science tells me there is hope of his cure."
"What medicament have you for a diseased mind?" asked the Sultan.
With reverent pomposity, but in low voice not overheard by the patient, the physician uttered the prescription:
"First, we have the religious cure—if so be that the man is under the charm of the evil spirits—Find thee a cord with eleven knots tied on it:—for such was the number on the cord with which the daughters of Lobeid, the Jew, bewitched the Prophet. As thou untiest the knots repeat the last two chapters of the Koran, which the Angel Gabriel revealed as the talisman, saying—
"'I fly for refuge unto the Lord of the daybreak, that he may deliver me from the mischief of the night, when it cometh on; and from the mischief of women, blowing on the knots; and from the mischief of the envious; and from the mischief of the whisperer, the devil, who slyly withdraweth, who whispereth evil suggestions into the breasts of men: and from genii and men.'
"If this should fail—as I have known it to fail in the case of those who were not born in the sacred family of Islâm—we should try the virtues of the heritage bowl, which is much esteemed among the Giaours. I have possessed myself of one, once the property of an ancient family. It is made of silver, and engraved with forty-one padlocks. A decoction mixed in this bowl, and poured on the head of the patient any time within seven weeks after the day on which they celebrate the imagined rising of Jesu, son of Mary, from the dead, will often break the most malignant spell. The Christian Paska[80] is just past; so that it will be opportune."