Every day he could be seen at the gate of the cemetery near the well of Zemzem, watching the funeral processions which passed before him day after day, for Mecca is a populous place.
A year had passed, and he was still waiting in vain—a coffin such as that described by the nocturnal apparition had not yet passed before him. Either the coffin was blue but the pall was not yellow, or the pall lacked the necessary blue letters, or if it had the blue letters the arabesques were not of silver, or if every requisite mark of identification was there, the corpse was not the corpse of a woman, but of a man, or a manchild of twelve years.
Muhzin was slowly approaching that state of mind which we call madness, when one day he heard from the other beggars that there was going to be a splendid funeral that day—the wife of the Kadilesker, the beautiful Eminha, had died.
Eminha!
That name put heart into Muhzin once more. All day long he did not depart from the gate of the cemetery, and the beating of his heart almost stifled him when he heard approaching him the funeral music which always heads the funeral procession.
Muhzin had no thought for the splendour of the funeral, no thought for the dancing dervishes, nor for the wailing women-mourners, nor for the siligdars who scattered small silver coins among the mob of mendicants. All he could do was to gaze upon the bier.
Even from a distance he could see that the coffin was blue and the pall a bright yellow. When they came nearer he could even distinguish the blue letters on the pall, and when they came level with him he could see the silver embroidery of arabesques quite well.
Muhzin, wild with joy, violently pushed aside those standing in front of him, forced his way through the procession right up to the coffin, and cried—
"Stop! Stop! This is Eminha. This is my wife!"
The attendants, the great men, the Kadilesker himself—the dead woman's husband—looked with amazement upon this raving figure who had dared to disturb the order of the funeral; but Muhzin regarded them not, but stripped the pall from off the face of the dead woman.