I produced the four mejidis from a trouser-pocket, and, receiving them, he went back to the door by which the usher stood, and whispered to the man, who went inside a moment and came back with the private secretary of the Caimmacam. The compliments which passed between them seemed to me interminable. I paced the pavement of the waiting-room, the only figure in the crowd whose attitude bespoke impatience. The others sat or squatted round the walls in perfect resignation, some of them smoking, others munching nuts of various kinds, of which the shells began to hide the floor adjacent to them. A few of the suppliants had even had the forethought to bring with them bags full of provisions, as if anticipating that their time of waiting might endure for several days. At last, when I was growing really angry with him, Suleyman returned and told me: 'All is well, and we can now be going, if your Honour pleases.' 'I do please,' I rejoined indignantly. 'Why have you kept me waiting all this while? I never wished to come at all into this place, and Allah knows that we have done no good by coming. We have spoilt a morning which we might have spent upon the road.' 'Allah, Allah!' sighed Suleyman long-sufferingly. 'Your Honour is extremely hard to please. Did not his Excellency talk to you exclusively, with every sign of the most lively pleasure for quite half an hour; whereas he scarcely deigned to throw a word to me, although I wooed his ear with language calculated to seduce the mind of kings? I have some cause to be dejected at neglect from one so powerful; but you have every cause to be elated. He is now your friend.' 'I shall never see him in my life again most likely!' I objected. 'Nay, that you cannot tell,' replied my mentor suavely. 'To be acquainted with a person in authority is always well.' CHAPTER XXIII CONCERNING BRIBES 'Why did you want those four mejidis?' I inquired severely. Suleyman shrugged up his shoulders and replied: 'I had to pay the proper fees, since you yourself showed not a sign of doing so, to save our carefully established honour and good name.' 'You don't mean that you gave them to the Caimmacam?' 'Allah forbid! Consider, O beloved, my position in this matter. To put it in the form of parables: Suppose a king and his vizier should pay a visit to another king and his vizier. If there were presents to be made, I ask you, would not those intended for the king be offered personally by the king, and those for the vizier by the vizier? It will be obvious to your Honour, upon slight reflection, that if, in our adventure of this morning, a present to the Governor was necessary or desirable, you personally, and no other creature, should have made it.' 'Merciful Allah!' I exclaimed. 'He would have knocked me down.'