"I shan't do it!" said the stout little watch-maker; "I never take them off when I enter the chapel of the most Holy Virgin, and I won't take them off in the house of your Prophet!"
They cursed in their hearts the watch-maker and all his race, and were in a state of vast perplexity. The "wise men" had met early in the morning: it was already noon, and yet, so far from having got over their difficulty, they were, in fact, exactly where they had been before breakfast; when a gray-haired muezzin, or priest, who had hitherto been silent, claimed permission to speak:
"If," said the venerable priest, "the mosque be out of repair, and lime and bricks have to be conveyed into the interior, for the use of the masons, do not asses carry those loads, and do they not enter with their shoes on?"
"You speak truly," was the general reply.
"And does the donkey," resumed the muezzin, "believe in the One God, or in Mohammed, the Prophet of God?"
"No, in truth—no," all replied.
"Then," said the muezzin, "let the Christian go in shod, as a donkey would do, and come out as a donkey!"
The argument of the muezzin was unanimously applauded. In the character of a donkey, therefore, did the Christian enter the great Mohammedan temple!
That was a capital burlesque which appeared in "Punch," about the time that Prince de Joinville bombarded Algiers, in the shape of a letter from a French soldier to his mother in Paris. It is brim full of good puns: