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Updated: May 31, 2025
One evening Sir Philip was surprised to find at Haroun's house another European. He paused in his narrative to describe this man.
"And now," wrote Sir Philip, "I will state by what means I discovered that Louis Grayle still lived, changed from age into youth; a new form, a new being; realizing, I verily believe, the image which Haroun's words had raised up, in what then seemed to me the metaphysics of fantasy, -criminal, without consciousness of crime; the dreadest of the mere animal race; an incarnation of the blind powers of Nature, beautiful and joyous, wanton and terrible and destroying!
One by one they killed the camels, loathing still the proffered food, But in weakness or in frenzy slaked their burning thirst in blood. On unheeded heaps of treasure rested each unconscious head; While, with pious care, the dying struggled to entomb the dead. So they perished. Gaunt with famine, still did Haroun's trusty hand For his latest dead companion scoop sepulture in the sand.
And none of Ebn Haroun's friends did aught, for the world knew through whom it was that Seti lived and land was hard to keep in Manfaloot and the prison near. But one day a kavass of the Khedive swooped down on Manfaloot, and twenty young men were carried off in conscription. Among them was Seti, now married to Ahassa, the fellah maid for whom the grindstone had fallen on Ebn Haroun's head.
So saying the prince seated himself upon the royal divan, and forthwith appointed Hafiz, a favourite of his own, to be Grand Vizier. He next ordered the new Grand Vizier to put Zobeideh, Haroun's favourite wife, and Prince Emin, her son, in prison, and declared that on the morrow, when he judged Giafer, he would also pronounce sentence on the others.
"If any one wishes to be instructed in this matter," replied Giafar, "the man and the tower are there, he may try the adventure I will not be jealous of his success." The conversation of the Prince and his ministers was a little interrupted by some persons who accosted them. One of them was Caliph, and came to propose Haroun's quitting his habit of dervish, and accepting the place of Vizier.
He lived in the days of Ismail the Khedive, and was familiarly known as the Murderer. He had earned his name, and he had no repentance. From the roof of a hut in his native village of Manfaloot he had dropped a grindstone on the head of Ebn Haroun, who contended with him for the affections of Ahassa, the daughter of Haleel the barber, and Ebn Haroun's head was flattened like the cover of a pie.
Abu 'Atahiyeh, who was sitting next to Ishak, having dictated some lines, and Ishak having written them down, the latter sang them to a favourite air of Haroun's, being accompanied on the lute by Isaac, the most famous of all the players on that instrument. The lines were these: "O, LOVELY STARS!" "O lovely stars! O lovely stars! O lovely stars in the sky!
"You will aid him to do so?" "Three days hence I will tell you." On the third day Grayle revisited Haroun, and, at Haroun's request, Sir Philip came also. Grayle declared that he had already derived unspeakable relief from the remedies administered; he was lavish in expressions of gratitude; pressed large gifts on Haroun, and seemed pained when they were refused.
Mahmoud, one of Haroun's successors, provided in Bagdad a refuge for the learned men of the East who were disturbed by the wars and troubles of the time. He became a liberal patron of literature and education.
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