“Thou sayest well,” rejoined the Emir. “I may not slay thee. But my daughter is manifestly most inflammable, wherefore I will burn her.”
“Were it not better to circumcise me?” suggested Gaddo.
Many difficulties were raised, but Ayesha’s mother siding with Gaddo, and promising a more amicable deportment for the future towards the other lights of the harem, the matter was arranged, and Gaddo recited the Mahometan profession of faith, and became the Emir’s son-in-law. The execrable social system under which he had hitherto lived thus vanished like a nightmare from an awakened sleeper. Wedded to one who had saved his life by her compassion, and whose life he had in turn saved by his change of creed, adoring her and adored by her, with the hope of children, and active contact with multitudes of other interests from which he had hitherto been estranged, he forgot the ecclesiastic in the man; his intellect expanded, his ideas multiplied, he cleared his mind of cant, and became an eminent philosopher.
“Dear son,” said the Emir to him one day, “the Lacrima is spent, we thirst, and the tribute of that Christian dog, the Bishop of Amalfi, tarries to arrive. We will presently fit out certain vessels, and thou shalt hold a visitation of thine ancient diocese.”
“Methinks I see a ship even now,” said Gaddo; and he was right. She anchored, the ambassadors landed and addressed the Emir:
“Prince, we bring thee the stipulated tribute, yet not without a trifling deduction.”
“Deduction!” exclaimed the Emir, bending his brows ominously.
“Highness,” they represented, “by reason of the deficiency of last year’s vintage it hath not been possible to provide more than forty-nine casks, which we crave to offer thee accordingly.”
“Then,” pronounced the Emir sententiously, “the compact is broken, the ship is confiscated, and war is declared.”
“Not so, Highness,” said they, “for the fiftieth cask is worth all the rest.”