[325]. Salih’s speeches are euphuistic.
[326]. From the Fátihah.
[327]. A truly Eastern saying, which ignores the “old maids” of the West.
[328]. i.e. naming her before the lieges as if the speaker were her and his superior. It would have been more polite not to have gone beyond “the unique pearl and the hoarded jewel”: the offensive part of the speech was using the girl’s name.
[329]. Meaning emphatically that one and all were nobodies.
[330]. Arab. Badr, the usual pun.
[331]. Arab. Kirát (κεράτιον) the bean of the Abrus precatorius, used as a weight in Arabia and India and as a bead for decoration in Africa. It is equal to four Kamhahs or wheat-grains and about 3 grs. avoir.; and being the twenty-fourth of a miskal, it is applied to that proportion of everything. Thus the Arabs say of a perfect man, “He is of four-and-twenty Kirát” i.e. pure gold. See vol. iii. 239.
[332]. The (she) myrtle: Kazimirski (A. de Biberstein) Dictionnaire Arabe-Francais (Paris Maisonneuve 1867) gives Marsín = Rose de Jericho: myrte.
[333]. Needless to note that the fowler had a right to expect a return present worth double or treble the price of his gift. Such is the universal practice of the East: in the West the extortioner says, “I leave it to you, sir!”
[334]. And she does tell him all that the reader well knows.