chelor
soldier often is nothing but a vagabond, to whom it is indifferent
whether he serves the king of Naples or the king of Morocco."

The Roman warriors were married; they fought for their wives and
children; and they enslaved the wives and children of other nations.

A great Italian politician, who further was very learned in oriental
languages, a very rare thing among our politicians, said to me in my
youth: "_Caro figlio_, remember that the Jews have never had but one
good institution, that of having a horror of virginity." If this little
race of superstitious intermediaries had not considered marriage as the
first law of man, if there had been among them convents of nuns, they
were irreparably lost.

_MASTER_

SECTION I

"Unfortunate that I am to have been born!" said Ardassan Ougli, young
page of the great Sultan of the Turks. "If it were only the great Sultan
on whom I am dependent; but I am subject to the chief of my oda, to the
capigi pasha; and when I receive my pay, I have to bow down to one of
the tefterdar's clerks who deducts half of it. Before I was seven years
old I had cut off, in spite of myself, in ceremony, the end of my
prepuce, and it made me ill for a fortnight. The dervish who prays for
us is my master; an iman is still more my master; the mollah is still
more my master than the iman. The cadi is another master; the
cadi-leskier is master still more; the mufti is much more master than
all these together. The grand vizier's kaia can with a word have me
thrown into the canal; and the grand vizier, finally, can have my neck
wrung at his pleasure, and stuff the skin of my head, without anybody
even taking notice.

"How many masters, great God! even if I had as many bodies and as many
souls as I have duties to accomplish, I could not attend to everything.
Oh, Allah! if only you had made me a screech-owl! I should live free in
my hole, and I should eat mice at my ease without masters or servants.
That assuredly is man's real destiny; only since he was perverted has he
masters. No man was made to serve another man continuously. Each would
have charitably aided his fellow, if things were as they should be. The
man with eyes would have led the blind man, the active man would have
acted as crutch to the cripple. This world would have been the paradise
of Mohammed; and it is the hell which is exactly under the pointed
bridge."

Thus did Ardassan Ougli speak, after receiving the stirrup-le