“On hearing this my former companion, clenching his hands and showing as intense a passion as his dignity would allow—a magnificent figure in those clothes of his (my clothes)—cried, ‘What? Is it possible that one whom I have nourished, tended and befriended should be guilty of so abominable a crime? How wise we were to make the regulation! How excellent and zealous are you in your office thus to have found the first culprit who attempted theft in this place! How admirable that he should be brought to justice before he could consummate his crime! How marked is the work of Providence’—here he lifted his eyes to heaven—‘which has given him up to us for an example! Come, let us cut off his head with a blunt saw.’
“The officer who had thus traitorously caught me bowed low and said, ‘Hearing and obedience! But if my lord will take council I would speak.’
“ ‘What is it you would say?’ said my companion, who resumed his seat but slowly and seemed displeased at the interruption.
“ ‘My lord,’ said the official, ‘I suggest that if you cut off his miserable head with a blunt saw, though doubtless it would have a good effect for the moment and strike terror into the hearts of those here who see it, so that never more shall sheep be stolen from this market, nor ever more shall we suffer as we have suffered in the past, yet it would be of slighter effect than what I shall propose. For to hear of a man’s execution is one thing, but to hear his own relation of his sufferings is another. I propose therefore that he shall be beaten at great length but not to the point of death; on the approaching of that consummation let him be released to crawl away and tell his story throughout our countries to whoever will listen. Such an example would be of far more service to the owners, my lord, than his death would be, and I promise that he shall be beaten in the most expert manner to the advantage of all posterity.’
“Even as he advised so was it done. I was given the bastinado without mercy until I thought I should have expired, and then under every circumstance of ignominy I was turned loose with a week’s provision of coarse meal into that deserted country, to spread terror among the servants of the wealthy owners and by my example to deter them from ever attempting to play tricks with their masters’ goods.
“I, who from my youth have abhorred the ill use of servants, I who had founded once so great a fortune and proved so kind a master to hosts of dependents, I in my ingenuousness and simple heart could not have believed that such trickery existed in the world! I had been wholly duped!
“As I limped from village to village, begging my bread, I heard the whole story and it exactly confirmed the conclusion I had reached when I first stood trembling before the Sheiks at the Mosque.
“The shepherd in his poor clothes was the richest sheep owner in the country. He and his fellow lords had for some years past suffered from surreptitious sales, they had appointed officers to watch the markets and even so had not always been able to recover the purchase money from their agents. They had therefore—as I guessed—instituted a system of permits so that no man could sell in the market without their signed licences and so that each man so selling could be detected as a thief by the officers of the markets. But how should I, a poor stranger from oversea, know anything of this? The blackness of the treason wounded me even more than the sufferings of my bastinado. I almost lost my faith in man; by the Everlasting Mercy I did not lose my faith in Heaven! … Nothing, my boys,” said the old man, his voice trembling, as he remembered this terrible passage of the past, “nothing but Religion supported me during the fearful days that followed. I think I can say with humility that one less founded in a firm reliance upon his Maker would have grown embittered. I might have turned into one of those useless people who, as the result of misfortune, become railers, nourishing a perpetual quarrel against mankind. But our Holy Religion stood me in good stead, and as my wounds healed and as my wanderings led me further from the scene of my torture I recovered so much of my spirits as once more to attempt what might have seemed impossible; I faced the world again. It would seem that those for whom Heaven has high designs, those for whom, like myself, it intends the highest positions among men, must in the divine scheme pass first through the fire and the ordeal. Happy the men who (like myself) profit by such visitations and retain unclouded their childlike trust in God.”
“Amen,” murmured the eldest of the nephews.
“What was that you said?” cried Mahmoud sharply?
“I said ‘Amen,’ Uncle,” answered the lad in humble tones. His uncle scanned him narrowly.
“Well,” he muttered, “I suppose you are too much of a fool to have meant it ill. …”
At this the strident nasals of the muezzin suddenly shrieked from the neighbouring minaret and the young lads with unaccustomed rapidity vacated the great merchant’s apartment.
VIII
Al-Bustán, or “The Orchard”
When Mahmoud’s nephews reappeared before him at the hour of public executions it was in a certain weariness of spirit; for though they knew that the fortunes of their uncle must subsequently be recovered in the narrative (since there he was before them, rolling, or, as the phrase went in Baghdad, “dripping” with it) yet the blows of fate had fallen upon him with such violence in the recent tale that something of his then despair had entered their
