“Do what thou judgest right and God preserve thee!” answered Barakah, with a point of irony which he did not perceive.
“My conscience is relieved,” he cried. “I thank thee. God knows how it has troubled me since our return.”
That evening he departed with his friends, leaving Barakah to hear the lamentations of the girls.
“They are all bewitched,” cried Bedr. “Hâfiz is by nature pious. Even now he names the Name of Allah when he opens any door and curses the religion of the infidels when passing by their idols in the streets and squares. Our Lord preserve his life! Each night I see him dead in some disgraceful haunt, his house dishonoured. Oh that I knew a good magician, a true believer, in this land of mangy dogs!”
Their fears, against her will, infected Barakah; during the long night-watches they became a sickness, and when day broke again they seemed confirmed. Yûsuf had not returned. She went to Bedr-ul-Budûr and found her in the same anxiety. They sat together, wondering what to do. Grey light at the window, raindrops coursing down the panes, made anguish visible.
At length, when eight o’clock had struck, there came a note for Barakah. It was in French, and from the exiled Prince, the revolutionary. It bade her have no fear; her husband would be with her in an hour, when the writer hoped, with her permission, to present his compliments in person and explain the case. The other girls had come by that time from their lodgings to get strength from Barakah. Conjecture ravened round the simple statement in the letter. At ten o’clock the Prince sent up his card; the three girls fled across the passage just in time to avoid encountering the visitor, who led into the room the errant youths. The Prince, a lean, ascetic-looking man, with boyish eyes, bowed low to Barakah.
“Madame,” he opened, with a flourish of his hand towards the group of reprobates, “I ask you to remember of your husband, and also beg you to remind the fair companions of my nephew and these other gentlemen, that they are young, these boys, and therefore capable of progress. It is a proof that they possess some germ of sense, which later may develop into mind, that, being terrified at last, they sent to me. I found them in a most equivocal position—in fact, dear madame, at the Conciergerie. Thanks to my relations with important people in this city, I had no difficulty in procuring their release, since they were not precisely guilty, only imbecile. I am glad to have been able to assist them, for the love I bear their parents and our common Faith. But they will allow me to remark that vicious boys should travel only with a tutor, who should have a whip. It disgusts me even to conceive that any man could be so foolish as to quit the side of one so lovely and so virtuous as you, madame, to follow beastliness. Dear madame, your servant!”
He retired; when Yûsuf and the others pressed round Barakah, a group of penitent and frightened children. Hâfiz, the fat, knelt down before her, tears coursing down his cheeks; Saïd kissed her raiment; Yûsuf pleaded in her ear. They had done wrong, they owned, though nothing very dreadful. Some elegant ladies had admitted them to their society; they were sitting in a café communing in all refinement, when horrible low men arrived and claimed those ladies. One threw a glass at Saïd and cut his face—the wound was shown—on which there was a scuffle; gendarmes came and, siding with their coreligionists, conveyed the righteous Muslims straight to prison.
“Where we should have stayed forever, had not Hâfiz thought of calling in his uncle,” blubbered Izz-ud-dîn; “simply for being Muslims, they are so fanatical.”
All four were bent upon return to Egypt, since Paris had become a place of terror. The rapture of the girls was indescribable. They danced and clapped their hands, embraced each other, laughed, cried, and gave way to all kinds of folly. Bedr-ul-Budûr made vows to divers saints, and held delighted conversations with her mother long since dead.
Four days later they were all on board a steamer, quitting France. The sea was smooth; the ladies stayed on deck. There was no longer any question of confining them in stuffy cabins; experience of Frankish manners had done that much good.
Yûsuf turned round from cursing the fair country they were leaving, to look ahead across the vast expanse of sparkling sea.
“O land of Egypt! Blessed one!” he sighed. “Most beautiful of all that see the sun! In thee are no hideous and shocking mountains, no cataracts, no chasms, no ferocious beasts or savage people such as appal the traveller in other lands. All is flat and smooth and debonair in thee; and if thou housest infidels they dare not bite. Thy Nile is smooth and good to drink, not putrid and forever kicking like this sea. May Allah bring us to thy shores in safety and never let us leave them any more, but live in honour, eating, drinking, fasting in due season, praising God, doing good deeds, and getting many children!”
At this conclusion there was laughter and applause.
“Amîn!” cried Hâfiz. “By Allah, it is true. The air of lands of infidelity breeds madness. Hail, O Egypt!”
XVIII
“A rare place, by Allah!—full to the brim of education and refinement. It is there that one acquires the latest mode and learns to view all creatures with fastidious eyes. In Paris people would be angered at the ignorance which prevails even among our greatest learned men. Thou too shouldst go to Paris, O my dear!”
Thus Hâfiz Bey at Alexandria, to a relative who came on board to welcome him. Barakah was much amused to overhear him, as also Yûsuf vaunting Paris to Ghandûr; who, weeping all the
