“We all rose; the audience and the councillors and the orator himself united in chanting that portion of the Koran which details Muhammad’s visit to the moon (a religious exercise dear to this folk). We then sang an invocation to Allah that he might protect His Majesty the King and throw any hypothetical enemies of that monarch into the utmost confusion. Then we filed out of the Mosque in our thousands to the coolness of the declining day. That great, that historic, that fatal meeting had occupied four hours!
“The council was immediately summoned, and their first action, after their obeisance to the king upon his throne, was to assure me, individual by individual, that no idea of any attack upon me had been for one moment intended.
“ ‘It is, my dear Mahmoud,’ said the grand vizier, placing his hand familiarly upon mine as it lay listless upon my knee, ‘it is the principle of the matter which we must consider. That is it.’ He pressed my hand on the other side. ‘For yourself, Mahmoud, as you know, we have a respect which exceeds all bounds, but we must move with the times. Things are not what they were. Evolution is better than revolution. If we do not reform ourselves, things will reform us. Mend it or end it. What did the Sultan Omar say in the thirty-seventh year of the Flight of the Prophet?’
“These commonplaces fell mournfully upon my ears. I made no attempt to reply. His Majesty was pleased to say a few sympathetic words. The Tribune Tarib, who evidently felt embarrassed by my position and by his memories of our past friendship, most earnestly protested that his whole object had been to stem the growing dangerous demand—nay, he would go so far as to say perilous demand; nay more, a minatory demand; yea, a threatening demand. Had he not stemmed the demand as he had it would have had tremendous consequences in the way of demand. The great lord whose special function on the council was solemnity and who was known by the title of His Impressiveness, opened his mouth in the midst of his prodigious beard to say that he thoroughly agreed with these sentiments.
“For my part I said nothing, but sat mournfully, seeing no issue and attending the pleasure of those who could do what they would with me and mine. I heard their debate: I was asked to sign their conclusions. I did so with a reluctant, unwilling hand; and as I signed my name in its place and affixed my seal I glanced at the wording of the proclamation and felt some relief to discover that the Salt Tax was not abolished, but only halved, while the loss so occasioned was to be made good by a tax upon revenue of one dinar in each hundred—a very moderate amount.
“After this dreadful session (the date will remain engraved upon my soul to my dying day!—it was the anniversary of the day upon which my grandfather, your great grandfather, dear boys, had been hanged) I paced up and down in my courtyard alone, no longer soothed by the ceaseless whisper of my beloved fountains, in no mood for taking down any one of my famous scrolls, nor even for toying with the numerous Circassians whom I had imported at vast expense during the preceding months. My bosom and my brow were contracted and I was weary of life.
“But after some hours of these mournful reflections some considerations of hope occurred to me. ‘After all,’ said I to myself, ‘there must be ups and downs. Many a man has lost a fortune and recovered it. My income is halved, but what remains is still ample.’ I could yet call myself an extremely wealthy man—among the wealthiest in the state. The small tax put upon my revenue I could not grudge, since it fell also upon the revenues of others.
“But I was to learn what bitter truth there lay behind the oft-repeated boast of these people that they proceeded step by step, slowly, one thing at a time, etc., etc., etc. Not a month had passed but a modification was issued to the first regulation and it was ordained, in view of certain rumours which had been heard in the marketplace, that the tax on revenue should be of a more complicated kind. It was to begin, indeed, at one dinar in the hundred, but since it was harsh to apply even this small burden to the poorer citizens, only those receiving at least one thousand dinars should pay, and the proportion was to rise rapidly with the larger fortunes until, for such a man as myself, the proportion reached one quarter of the total! But worse was to come.
“Yielding to the vigorous popular clamour, the tax was doubled for those of alien birth. For those whose income was derived in any way from the revenues of state the tax was doubled again. Exception was made for the councillors, for (so ran the proclamation) their salaries are paid by His Majesty, and a diminution of them would but take money with one hand to give it back to the other. I hoped for one wild moment that I should come within so clear a category. But no! In a further clause it was specially indicated that this should apply only to salaries actually paid by the treasury and not to annuities guaranteed by, or derived from, the public revenue
