[203]. They could legally demand to be recouped but the chief would have found some pretext to put off payment. Such at least is the legal process of these days.
[204]. i.e. drunk with the excess of his beauty.
[205]. A delicate way of offering a fee. When officers commanding regiments in India contracted for clothing the men, they found these douceurs under their dinner-napkins. All that is now changed; but I doubt the change being an improvement: the public is plundered by a “Board” instead of an individual.
[206]. This may mean, I should know her even were my eyes blue (or blind) with cataract and the Bresl. Edit. ix., 231, reads “Ayní” = my eye; or it may be, I should know her by her staring, glittering, hungry eyes, as opposed to the “Hawar” soft-black and languishing (Arab. Prov. i. 115, and ii. 848). The Prophet said “blue-eyed (women) are of good omen.” And when one man reproached another saying “Thou art Azrak” (blue-eyed!) he retorted, “So is the falcon!” “Zurk-an” in Kor. xx. 102, is translated by Mr. Rod well “leaden eyes.” It ought to be blue-eyed, dim-sighted, purblind.
[207]. Arab. “Zalábiyah bi-’Asal.”
[208]. Arab. “Ká’ah,” their mess-room, barracks.
[209]. i.e. Camel shoulder-blade.
[210]. So in the Brazil you are invited to drink a copa d’agua and find a splendid banquet. There is a smack of Chinese ceremony in this practice which lingers throughout southern Europe; but the less advanced society is, the more it is fettered by ceremony and “etiquette.”
[211]. The Bresl. Edit. (ix. 239) prefers these lines:—
Some of us be hawks and some sparrow-hawks, ✿ And vultures some which at carrion pike;