presence lean as a dog in the bazaar? Is she not
here? Have I spoken well?"

"It is well said, cadi. Murakhas--you are dismissed."

The Frank physician was then fined one hundred sequins more; fifty for
feeling the pulse, and fifty more for looking at a Turkish woman's
tongue. The young woman was dismissed to the pacha's harem, the old
woman to curse as much as she pleased, and Hudusi with full permission
to _doubt_ anything but the justice of the pacha.

Chapter XVII

"Mashallah! God be praised! we are rid of that fellow and his doubts. I
have been thinking, Mustapha, as I smoked the pipe of surmise, and
arrived at the ashes of certainty, that a man who had so many doubts,
could not be a true believer. I wish I had sent him to the mollahs; we
might have been amused with his being impaled, which is a rare object
now-a-days."

"God is great," replied Mustapha, "and a stake is a strong argument, and
would remove many doubts. But I have an infidel in the court-yard who
telleth of strange things. He hath been caught like a wild beast; it is
a Frank Galiongi, who hath travelled as far as that son of Shitan,
Huckaback; he was found in the streets, overpowered by the forbidden
juice, after having beaten many of your highness's subjects, and the
cadi would have administered the bamboo, but he was as a lion, and he
scattered the slaves as chaff, until he fell, and could not rise again.
I have taken him from the cadi, and brought him here. He speaketh but
the Frankish tongue, but the sun who shineth on me knoweth I have been
in the Frank country; and Inshallah! please the Lord, I can interpret
his meaning."

"What sort of a man may he be, Mustapha?"

"He is a baj baj--a big belly--a stout man; he is an Anhunkher, a
swallower of iron. He hath sailed in the war vessels of the Franks. He
holdeth in one hand a bottle of the forbidden liquor; in the other, he
shakes at those who would examine him, a thick stick. He hath a large
handful of the precious weed which we use for our pipes in one of his
cheeks, and his hair is hanging behind down to his waist, in a rolled up
mass, as thick as the arm of your slave."

"It is well--we will admit him; but let there be armed men at hand. Let
me have a full pipe! God is great," continued the pacha, holding out his
glass to be filled; "and the bottle is nearly empty. Place the guards,
and bring in the infidel."

The guards in a few minutes brought into the presence of the pacha