No bed of roses was strewn for Aly. Both at home and abroad rough and anxious work was before him. To the standing contention between the Arabs and the Coreish was now added the cry, which was soon to rend Islam, of vengeance on the regicides. Further, the red-handed treason enacted at Medîna had loosened the bonds of society. Constituted authority was set at naught. Bands of Bedouins, scenting from afar the approach of anarchy and the chance of plunder, hung about the city. They were bidden to depart; but encouraged by the servile population, which, broken loose during the insurrection, still kept aloof from their masters, they refused.[495] Aly was pressed on many sides, by those who held him bound by his accession-oath, to vindicate the majesty of the Divine law, and to punish the wicked men who had imbrued their hands in the blood of Othmân. Even Talha and Zobeir, awakening too late to the portentous nature of the crime enacted before their eyes and hardly against their will, urged this. ‘My brothers,’ replied Aly, ‘I am not indifferent to what ye say. But I am helpless. These wild Bedouins and rampant slaves will have their way. What is this but an outburst of Paganism long suppressed--a return, for the moment, of “the days of Ignorance,” a work of Satan? Just now they are beyond my power. Let us wait; and the Lord will guide us.’ This waiting, hesitating mood was the bane of Aly’s life. He loved ease; and though sometimes obstinate and self-willed, his ordinary principle was that things left to themselves would mend. [Sidenote: The Coreish alarmed.] The Coreish were anxious and alarmed. The revolt, under the veil of discontent at the ungodly rule of Othmân, was now (they said) taking a far wider range. The Bedouins were becoming impatient of the control of the Coreishite aristocracy; and that which had happened to the Beni Omeyya--now forced to fly Medîna--might happen at any moment to the whole body of the Coreish. Yet Aly, though professing to denounce the attack of the regicides as high treason, took no steps to punish it, but temporised. A prompt and vigorous pursuit of the traitors would no doubt have been joined in, heart and soul, by Muâvia and by the whole nobility of Islam. But Aly preferred to let the vessel drift, and so it was drawn rapidly into the vortex of rebellion. [Sidenote: Aly seeks to supersede Muâvia in Syria.]