He glanced wildly round him, as though expecting his prey, new-created, to drop from heaven. Then he hid his face in his hands and wept before all men there.
His scribe, with intent to console him, set to work to make fresh coffee.
While Yûsuf remained thus, rocked with grief; while the scribe and a humbler attendant were busy about the little brazier, and the fragrance of coffee stewing caused the prisoners and their guards to lick envious lips, the door of the hall opened once again. Yûsuf groaned and his face puckered with the peevish desperation of a child. He supposed it was the Christian pig, returned to ruin him.
“Take, read, O Yûsuf,” cried a voice of triumph; when, looking up in surprise, the judge beheld Abd-ur-Rahman Bey. Still sobbing, he received a flimsy slip of paper, only to return it with a moan:
“It is in Frankish character, I cannot read it.”
“If my lord the Bey will deign to pass it to me, with the Câdi’s leave, I can perhaps decipher it,” said the scribe, once more at his post.
The scribe read, and recognized the words for Arabic. He quickly transliterated, and handed his copy to the judge.
“Ma sh’ Allah! O Allah, mercy! Have compassion! In what have I sinned that such woes are stacked upon me? I am robbed, and may not take vengeance; I give judgment, and must reverse my judgment. And all that is not enough. I myself am doomed to ruin by the Grand Wazìr. On one hand, the Grand Wazìr; on the other, the Powers of Europe. What am I to do, whom obey? Some one must die or I am ruined. Yet all these must go free, or I die. What matter in the end? Let me die, since it is so decreed.”
“Calm yourself, O my dear Yûsuf,” whispered Abd-ur-Rahman at his ear. “Thy plight is by no means desperate. I see many in this court who are nothing to my uncle—inquisitives of the city who have pushed in somehow. Punish a few of them and all is said.”