[241]. In text “Irham turham:” this is one of the few passive verbs still used in popular parlance.
[242]. This formula will be in future suppressed.
[243]. I spare my readers the full formula:—“Yúsuf took it and brake the seal (fazza-hu) and read it and comprehended its contents and purport and significance: and, after perusing it,” etc. These forms, decies repetitæ, may go down with an Eastern audience, but would be intolerable in a Western volume. The absence of padding, however, reduces the story almost to a patchwork of doggerel rhymes, for neither I nor any man can “make a silk purse from a suille ear.”
[244]. Here again in full we have:—“He mounted the she-camel and fared and ceased not faring until he drew near to the Palace of Al-Hayfá, where he dismounted and concealed his dromedary within the same cave. Then he swam the stream until he had reached the Castle and here he landed and appeared before Al-Hayfá,” etc.
[245]. “’Tis dogged as does it” was the equivalent expression of our British Aristotle, the late Charles Darwin.
[246]. Arab. “Jannat al-Khuld” = the Eternal Garden: vol. ix. 214.
[247]. [I read: Wa inní la-ar’ákum wa ar’à widáda-kum, wa-hakki-kumú antum a’azzu ’l-Warà ’andí = And I make much of you and of your love; by your rights (upon me, formula of swearing), you are to me the dearest of mankind.—St.]
[248]. In text: “He swam the stream and bestrode his she-camel.”
[249]. In text “Then she folded the letter and after sealing it,” etc.
[250]. Not “her hands” after Christian fashion.