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We have sometimes moral disquisitions among our people. This day we had a dispute on religion. The Zintanah, a real orthodox Musulman, maintained a strict distinction between the believers and unbelievers, giving heaven to the former and hell to the latter. Yusuf and several more tolerant gentlemen held out hope of mercy to us all, as God was "the Compassionate and the Merciful."
Yusuf came home, and far from being angry when he saw me with the woman, he remarked that I must have found much pleasure in conversing with a native of Rome, and he congratulated me upon the delight I must have felt in dancing with one of the beauties from the harem of the voluptuous Ismail. "Then it must be a pleasure seldom enjoyed, if it is so much talked of?"
Yusuf added, also, that En-Noor was dissatisfied with his present; that the Sultan had remarked to him, "It was a present for servants, and he had given it all away to the people." Moreover, that yesterday came several persons, marabouts, from Tintaghoda, who mentioned their displeasure to En-Noor because they had not yet received anything.
"If God cannot be matter," I said, "then He must be a spirit?" "We know what He is not but we do not know what He is: man cannot affirm that God is a spirit, because he can only realize the idea in an abstract manner. God immaterial; that is the extent of our knowledge and it can never be greater." I was reminded of Plato, who had said exactly the same an most certainly Yusuf never read Plato.
His head was cut off and sent to Cordova, where it was placed in an iron cage, over the gate of the city. The old lion was dead, but his whelps survived. Yusuf had left three sons, who inherited his warlike spirit, and were eager to revenge his death.
Here, Yusuf, get a stout rope and let the boy down the well; there isn't more than half a yard of water in it, and we will soon see whether the stranger lies or not." Here was a nice predicament! But Abdul Mujid faced the peril like a man, and held to the faint hope that no one would recognise the instrument even if they found it. It was a false hope.
So a guard was formed round us, and we went. As my feet touched the quay I heard a sound of angry voices, followed by groans and a splash in the water. "What is that?" I asked of Yusuf. "I think, General, that your servants from the Diana have settled some account that they had with the drunken dog who was so good as to bark out your name to me. But, with your leave, I will not look to make sure."
The mother of the three children was dead, and five years previous to the time of my visit, Yusuf had taken another wife, a native of Scio, young and very beautiful, but he told me himself that he was now too old, and could not hope to have any child by her. Yet he was only sixty years of age. Before I left, he made me promise to spend at least one day every week with him.
The reigning prince, the Rajah Muda Yusuf, and Rajah Dris, are daily visitors; the former brings a troop of followers with him, and they remain outside, their red sarongs and picturesque attitudes as they lounge in the shade, giving to the place that "native" air which everywhere I love, at least where "natives" are treated as I think that they ought to be, and my requirements are pretty severe!
The town commandant, Captain Grieve of the Black Watch, after many attempts at length produced a native who seemed, at any rate, more promising than the others that offered themselves. Yusuf was a sturdy, rather surly-looking youth of about eighteen. Evidently not a pure Arab, he claimed various admixtures as the fancy took him, the general preference being Kurd.
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