“Madame,” he opened, with a flourish of his hand towards the group of reprobates, “I ask you to remember of your husband, and also beg you to remind the fair companions of my nephew and these other gentlemen, that they are young, these boys, and therefore capable of progress. It is a proof that they possess some germ of sense, which later may develop into mind, that, being terrified at last, they sent to me. I found them in a most equivocal position—in fact, dear madame, at the Conciergerie. Thanks to my relations with important people in this city, I had no difficulty in procuring their release, since they were not precisely guilty, only imbecile. I am glad to have been able to assist them, for the love I bear their parents and our common Faith. But they will allow me to remark that vicious boys should travel only with a tutor, who should have a whip. It disgusts me even to conceive that any man could be so foolish as to quit the side of one so lovely and so virtuous as you, madame, to follow beastliness. Dear madame, your servant!”
He retired; when Yûsuf and the others pressed round Barakah, a group of penitent and frightened children. Hâfiz, the fat, knelt down before her, tears coursing down his cheeks; Saïd kissed her raiment; Yûsuf pleaded in her ear. They had done wrong, they owned, though nothing very dreadful. Some elegant ladies had admitted them to their society; they were sitting in a café communing in all refinement, when horrible low men arrived and claimed those ladies. One threw a glass at Saïd and cut his face—the wound was shown—on which there was a scuffle; gendarmes came and, siding with their co-religionists, conveyed the righteous Muslims straight to prison.
“Where we should have stayed for ever, had not Hâfiz thought of calling in his uncle,” blubbered Izz-ud-dîn; “simply for being Muslims, they are so fanatical.”
All four were bent upon return to Egypt, since Paris had become a place of terror. The rapture of the girls was indescribable. They danced and clapped their hands, embraced each other, laughed, cried, and gave way to all kinds of folly. Bedr-ul-Budûr made vows to divers saints, and held delighted conversations with her mother long since dead.
Four days later they were all on board a steamer, quitting France. The sea was smooth; the ladies stayed on deck. There was no longer any question of confining them in stuffy cabins; experience of Frankish manners had done that much good.
Yûsuf turned round from cursing the fair country they were leaving, to look ahead across the vast expanse of sparkling sea.
“O land of Egypt! Blessed one!” he sighed. “Most beautiful of all that see the sun! In thee are no hideous and shocking mountains, no cataracts, no chasms, no ferocious beasts or savage people such as appal the traveller in other lands. All is flat and smooth and debonair in thee; and if thou housest infidels they dare not bite. Thy Nile is smooth and good to drink, not putrid and for ever kicking like this sea. May Allah bring us to thy shores in safety and never let us leave them any more, but live in honour, eating, drinking, fasting in due season, praising God, doing good deeds, and getting many children!”
At this conclusion there was laughter and applause.
“Amîn!” cried Hâfiz. “By Allah, it is true. The air of lands of infidelity breeds madness. Hail, O Egypt!”