bread of grief! And so, after all, Hajji Baba has become a beggar!'

I then took to making the most sorrowful moanings and lamentations; for
the fear of starvation now stared me in the face notwithstanding the
charity of the people of Kom; and as despair is a malady which increases
the more the mind dwells upon its misfortune, I seemed to take delight
in reverting to all the horrors which I had lately witnessed in the
death of Zeenab; then I dwelt upon my confinement, then upon my loss,
and at length wound myself up to look upon my situation as so desperate,
that if I had had poison by me, I should certainly have swallowed it.

At this moment passed by my cell the old mollah, who, during my visit to
the mushtehed, had warned me against putting too much confidence in the
dervish. I told him of my misfortune, and raised such doleful wailings,
that his heart was touched.

'You spoke but too well, O mollah!' said I, 'when you warned me against
the dervish. My money is gone, and I am left behind. I am a stranger;
and he who called himself my friend has proved my bitterest enemy!
Curses on such a friend! Oh! whither shall I turn for assistance?'

'Do not grieve, my son,' said the mollah; 'we know that there is a God,
and if it be his will to try you with misfortune, why do you repine?
Your money is gone,--gone it is, and gone let it be; but your skin is
left,--and what do you want more? A skin is no bad thing, after all!'

'What words are these?' said I: 'I know that a skin is no bad thing; but
will it get back my money from the dervish?'

I then requested the old man to state my misfortune to the mushtehed,
and, moreover, my impossibility of showing him that respect by a
present, which was due to him, and which it had been my intention to
make.

He left me with promises of setting my case in its proper light before
the holy man; and, to my great joy, on the very same day the news of the
approaching arrival of the Shah was brought to Kom by the chief of
the tent-pitchers, who came to make the necessary preparations for his
accommodation.

The large open saloon in the sanctuary in which the king prays was
spread with fine carpets, the court was swept and watered, the fountain
in the centre of the reservoir was made to play, and the avenues to the
tomb were put into order. A deputation, consisting of all the priests,
was collected, to go before him, and meet him on his entry; and nothing
of ceremony was omitted which