A Persian who attaches himself to an individual will often prove himself very trustworthy in all matters affecting that individual’s interest; and generally speaking, attachment to a European would be likely to produce a more dependable loyalty than attachment to another Persian. The feeling that a European friend would always himself act in a certain manner frequently leads a Persian to try and act in the same way towards him. I remember a Persian servant once replying to my wife, who had expostulated with him on the subject of some egregious falsehood that he had just told in the bazaars, “Of course, Khanum, I don’t tell lies to you, for you don’t like it; but these people expect me to lie, and one couldn’t tell the truth to them.” Perhaps one might go further, and say that the Yezdi Mussulman frequently questions the virtue of keeping to an abstract principle, particularly when by abandoning it one might do a good turn to a friend. Impartiality is a thing which he absolutely fails to understand: indeed he considers it simply another name for disloyalty, and here it is probable that most other Easterns would agree with him. It is impossible to treat the inconsistency of Yezdi Mussulmans as simple weakness. It is rather the absence of such principles as Westerns generally possess than the inability to keep to them; and indeed it is often the result of other principles of a peculiar kind, diametrically opposed to those to which we are accustomed. The Yezdis are a free-handed folk, and they despise a man who does not spend freely. They like to appear to live up to their incomes, and I think that some of them have a feeling of the same kind about their debit and credit account with their Creator. Also we must not forget that Persian inconsistency is not always a deviation towards wrong, but equally often a deviation towards right. Though in Persia it is never well to trust to a man’s character, it is always advisable to appeal to high principles, even when dealing with apparently the most abandoned. While we were in Yezd we were brought into contact with three men in high position, whose names it is not necessary to mention, but whom I would put down as the three worst prominent men in Yezd. The first was an aristocratic official, the second a cleric, and the third an official and a _nouveau riche_. Now each of these three at some time or other made himself conspicuous by conduct that one was bound to commend and approve. It is impossible to always analyse motives, but in at least one case the action seemed to have been due to nothing but a disinterested and unselfish impulse. In the other cases it is more probable that expediency, or a conscious intention of paying for sins by _savabs_, entered into the matter.