“You mistake my meaning,” he informed them. “God forbid that I should wish our ladies to resemble closely those of Europe. If you desire that, you are very foolish. The harîm life, or something like it, is the best for women. It only needs reform and elevation. It is a system founded on the laws of God expressed in nature, whereas the European way of treating women has no sanction. The latter seems entirely meretricious when one sees how ladies here make sport of marriage and shun motherhood—how children flout and override their parents. If the understanding of our women were improved, their status raised, I think our way would be acknowledged better by impartial judges. No, all that I would borrow from the Franks would be a weapon. They excel us in mechanical contrivances, in practical education, and in method. These gifts I covet, for with equal weapons we should be their masters; our Faith exceeding any motive power which they possess.”
He went on talking in this strain till nearly midnight, when he left abruptly. Barakah was then let out of her dark prison. Alone with Yûsuf, she inquired his real opinion of the Prince’s views, which seemed to her inspiring.
“Like pitch! Like dung!” he answered in the vulgar speech of Egypt. “The production of ideas is an amusing pastime. It is strange, the things a man can think of if he applies his mind to it. And when a Prince is speaking one admires, of course; though this one is a madman who has lost a fine position and will lose his life merely for love of argument. What we are and do belongs to Allah. No thinking or wild talk affects it, praise to Him!”
He seemed glad to change the subject. Putting his arm round Barakah, he begged her in seductive tones to confide to him the secret about Frankish women.
“It is not for myself I ask,” he whispered fondly; “but Hâfiz, Izz-ud-dîn, and Saïd die to know. Where are these balls at which distinguished women fling aside all shame? We have been to dances, but the women there are base and ribald, showing none of that refinement in depravity which charms the mind in writings of this country.”
In vain did she assure him that good Frankish women were every whit as moral as good Orientals.
“We have their books for testimony,” was his answer. And again he told her: “It is for my friends I plead. I myself, as is well known, desire thee only.”
The women were left more and more alone, the private explorations of their lords bereaving them by day as well as night. Barakah did her best to entertain them. Together with the landlady she planned excursions, and took them to the ateliers where modes are created. But the sense of desolation dogged them everywhere. Scenes which they might have viewed with pleasure had their lords been faithful, encounters which might then have given them a thrill of mischief, appeared heart-rending in their luckless state. The very gaiety of the Parisian streets seemed gruesome. If a man in passing touched them they were seized with trembling, and once or twice came very near to fainting from pure shame; and their terror was intense at passing unknown doorways, though the landlady assured them there was not the slightest danger.
Their haunting fear was lest male unbelievers should abduct them; still more, perhaps, lest they should come to wish for such a fate—the most appalling that could be imagined for a Muslim woman. Bedr-ul-Budûr declared she knew a girl who, married to an infidel, brought forth black beetles—“not one, but thousands! millions!”—she related graphically—which at length devoured her. Such stories were received with acclamation, as justifying the extreme abhorrence which they felt for Frenchmen. And Barakah, though she tried to reason with them, shared their feelings in some measure, dismayed by the vulgarity of Western life. When, added to all this, it rained for five days in succession, her friends resigned their cause to God and ceased to worry, while she herself grew thoroughly despondent.