faith.

I, therefore, began to take myself to task upon what I did know. 'Let
me see,' said I, 'I know, lst, that all those who do not believe in
Mahomed, and in Ali his lieutenant, are infidels and heretics, and are
worthy of death. 2ndly, I also know that all men will go to Jehanum
(hell), excepting the true believers; and I further believe that it
is right to curse Omar.--I am certain that all the Turks will go to
_Jehanum_,--that all Christians and Jews are _nejis_ (unclean), and will
go to Jehanum,--that it is not lawful to drink wine or eat pork,--that
it is necessary to say prayers five times a day, and to make the
ablution before each prayer, causing the water to run from the elbow to
the fingers, not contrariwise, like the heretical Turks.'

I was proceeding to sum up the stock of my religious knowledge, when the
dervish came into the room; and I made no scruple of relating to him my
distress and its cause.

'Have you lived so long in the world,' said be, 'and not yet discovered
that nothing is to be accomplished without impudence? The stories which
Dervish Sefer, his companion, and I related to you at Meshed, have they
made so little impression upon you?'

'The effect of those stories upon my mind,' said I, 'produced such a
bastinado upon the soles of my feet, by way of a moral, that I request
you to be well assured I shall neither forget you nor them as long as
I live: the felek is a great help to the memory. And now, according to
your own account, instead of the bastinado, I am likely to get stoned,
should I be found wanting; a ceremony which, if it be the same to you, I
had rather dispense with. Say then, O dervish, what shall I do?'

'You are not that Hajji Baba which I always took you to be,' said the
dervish, 'if you have not the ingenuity to deceive the mushtehed. Keep
to your silence, and your sighs, and your shrugs, and your downcast
looks, and who is there that will discover you to be an ass? No, even I
could not.'

'Well,' said I, 'be it so: _Allah kerim!_ God is great!--but it is being
in very ill luck to be invited to an entertainment to eat one's own
filth.'

Upon which I set forward with my most mortified and downcast looks to
visit the mushtehed, and, thanks to my misfortunes, I truly believe that
no man in the whole city could boast of so doleful a cast of countenance
as I could. However, as I slowly paced the ground, I recollected one of
the tales recited by our great moralist Saadi,