“Go then, but slay not more than thou hast said.”
“To hear is to obey.”
After the plague was over, at the same hour, and in the same place, the phantom once more appears to him, and the holy man again addressed him thus—
“Whence comest thou?”
“From Cairo.”
“How many persons hast thou destroyed?”
“Ten thousand, according to my orders.”
“Thou liest, twenty thousand are dead.”
“’Tis true, I killed ten thousand, fear carried off the remainder.”
Shortly, and the traveller passes a tree, a mound, or a mass of ruins. The dragoman narrates the story of confined treasures and protecting genii, and marvels of the days long gone, and of deeds of sin, and ends with the universal ejaculation, “God is great, and Mahomet is his prophet.” From these people of mysteries and land of marvels the traveller returns, and though he only narrates, for fear of shame, the more credible of the stories he has heard, from that day forth, poor man, his friends shake their heads, and mutter their fears that a tropical sun has addled his brains.