"Doubtless, doubtless, Light of the World," cried the mollah, hastening to correct his error. "Thy unworthy servant meant to say, pleasures. When Haroun al Raschid found himself in similar moments of suffering and despondency, which he unquestionably brought on by too great attention to his pleasures"—
"Slave!" again interrupted the Caliph, "dost thou mock us, saying that our glorious ancestor exhausted himself with pleasures, thus striving to make it appear that we do the same? Do we not each day perform nine times nine prostrations, our face towards Mecca? Did we not, no longer back than yesterday, sign our name full twenty times to the death-warrants of those scurvy and unbelieving hounds who dared to blaspheme us, the Prophet's vicegerent, and to say in the Bezestein—What said the dogs? Have we not given orders to hang, impale, and exterminate like noisome vermin, all those who dare in any way to think or have an opinion? Have we not made this order public, to the great glorification of the Prophet and of our own name?"
The Caliph paused for a moment. Then turning suddenly to the mollah—"You may inform us," said he, "what our ancestor Haroun al Raschid was wont to do when afflicted like ourselves with heaviness of spirit."
"Bismillah!" again began the mollah. "When Haroun al Raschid was thus afflicted, he applied to the book which we have brought with us, and which your highness, if he so pleases, can see and even read"—
"Miserable wretch!" thundered the Caliph, with a glance of scorn at the speaker and his book. "Wherefore do we maintain you, and those like you, if it is not to do for us what we hold it beneath our dignity to do for ourselves? And is not the reading of books beneath our dignity? Do not all books contain the ideas and notions of a pack of scoundrels, who talk about things which they do not understand, and that in no wise concern them? Have we not decreed that the bowstring should be the portion of all those who are reported to be either writers or readers of books? And have we not therefore taken into our service a parcel of idlers, of whom thou art the chief, and whose duty it is to read and think for the whole of our people?"
"And why should the Light of the World read?" replied the mollah after a respectful pause. "He who is already the source of all earthly wisdom, the joy and admiration of all nations? How shall I express my wonder—how shall I sufficiently praise his high qualities?"—
"Stop, mollah!" cried the Caliph. "Know that it does not please us to be praised or wondered at by such as thou. Truly thy praises stink in our nostrils, and are as discords in our ears. It becometh not worms like thyself, whom we have raised from the dirt, and can again dash back into it, to seek to spy out our good qualities, lest at the same time they should discern"—our bad ones, the Caliph would probably have said, but he left the sentence unfinished.
"Thou shouldst look up at us," continued he, "as to the sun, in which neither good nor evil can be seen, but of which the presence is known by its effects. And now tell us what Haroun al Raschid did, when assailed by despondency even as we ourselves are."
"Allah Akbar! Haroun al Raschid, when afflicted like your highness, was wont to disguise himself in various ways, as a merchant, a soldier, or a sailor"——
"All that is well known to us," interposed the Caliph; "but although we are disposed to follow the example of our glorious ancestor so far as we can, without too great exertion of mind or body, yet we doubt whether just now we—— Thou knowest," he continued, interrupting himself, and in a lower tone, "that although Haroun al Raschid was certainly our forefather, yet our blood, improving by descent, is even purer and more illustrious than his. We cannot, therefore, condescend to imitate him in the way you speak of. But we will undertake a work that shall be far more pleasing to the Prophet. With our own hands will we embroider a twelfth under petticoat for his blessed mother, so that she may have one for each month in the year."