; for as soon as his patient had opened his eyes, he exclaimed,
"Did I not tell you so?" and in proportion as the draught operated,
he went on exulting thus: "There, there, see the efficacy of my
prescription! Had it not been for me, you would have seen the druggist
dead before you."

'I, however, would not allow him to proceed, and said: "If you are a
doctor, why did you not cure your patient without calling for me? Keep
to your blisters and to your bleedings, and do not interfere with that
which doth not belong to you."

'He answered, "Mr. Dervish, I make no doubt that you can write a very
good talisman, and also can get a very good price for it; but every one
knows who and what dervishes are; and if their talismans are ever of
use, it is not their sanctity which makes them so."

"Whose dog are you," exclaimed I, in return, "to talk to me after this
manner? I, who am a servant of the prophet. As for you doctors, your
ignorance is proverbial: you hide it by laying all to fate: if by chance
your patient recovers, then you take all the credit of the cure to
yourselves; should he die, you say, God hath decreed thus; what can the
efforts of man avail? Go to, go to; when you have nearly killed your
next patient, and then know not what more to ordain, send for me again,
and I will cover your impudent ignorance by curing him as I have just
done the druggist."

"By my head, and by your death," returned the doctor, "I am not a man
to hear this from any one, much less from a dog of a dervish:" and
immediately he got up and approached me in a threatening attitude,
making use of every epithet of abuse that he could think of.

'I received him with suitable expressions of contempt, and we very soon
came to blows; he so effectually fastened upon my hair, and I upon his
beard,[25] that we plucked out whole handfuls from each other: we bit
and spat, and fought with such fury, heedless of the sick man and the
cries of the women, that the uproar became very great, and perhaps would
have terminated in something serious, if one of the women had not run
in to us, in great agitation, assuring us that the _Darogah's_ officers
(police men) were then knocking at the door of the house, and inquiring
whence proceeded all the disturbance.

'This parted us; and then I was happy to find that the bystanders were
in my favour, for they expressed their contempt of the skill of the
physician, whose only object was to obtain money without doing his