s to harm
no man. How, then, could you slaughter that zealous divine?" "Sir," he
replied, "besides the Law, and besides the Path, we also have the Truth.
It was in serving the Truth that I paid him for his deed."(126)

These things would take place before the reality of this Cause was
revealed and all was made plain. For in those days no one knew that the
Manifestation of the Bab would culminate in the Manifestation of the
Blessed Beauty and that the law of retaliation would be done away with,
and the foundation-principle of the Law of God would be this, that "It is
better for you to be killed than to kill"; that discord and contention
would cease, and the rule of war and butchery would fall away. In those
days, that sort of thing would happen. But praised be God, with the advent
of the Blessed Beauty such a splendor of harmony and peace shone forth,
such a spirit of meekness and long-suffering, that when in Yazd men, women
and children were made the targets of enemy fire or were put to the sword,
when the leaders and the evil 'ulamas and their followers joined together
and unitedly assaulted those defenseless victims and spilled out their
blood--hacking at and rending apart the bodies of chaste women, with their
daggers slashing the throats of children they had orphaned, then setting
the torn and mangled limbs on fire--not one of the friends of God lifted a
hand against them. Indeed, among those martyrs, those real companions of
the ones who died, long gone, at Karbila--was a man who, when he saw the
drawn sword flashing over him, thrust sugar candy into his murderer's
mouth and cried, "With a sweet taste on your lips, put me to death--for you
bring me martyrdom, my dearest wish!"

Let us return to our theme. After the murder of her impious uncle, Mulla
Taqi, in Qazvin, Tahirih fell into dire straits. She was a prisoner and
heavy of heart, grieving over the painful events that had come to pass.
She was watched on every side, by attendants, guards, the farra_sh_es, and
her foes. While she languished thus, Baha'u'llah dispatched
Hadiy-i-Qazvini, husband of the celebrated _Kh_atun-Jan, from the capital,
and they managed, by a stratagem, to free her from that embroilment and
got her to Tihran in the night. She alighted at the mansion of Baha'u'llah
and was lodged in an upper apartment.

When word of this spread throughout Tihran, the Government hunted for her
high and low; nevertheless, the friends kept arriving to see he