"Allow us another week to enable my wife to get accustomed to the idea of going downstairs," replied the young husband. But when the week had passed, and the occupants of the first floor made no more sign than the dead, the father, whose old bones were beginning to grow mouldy in this little enviable habitation, made another demand. The son sent him about his business and announced coldly that each of them would remain in future where he was, in which he was wrong. Djezzar, whose intelligence service was admirably conducted, and who took pleasure in roaming himself about the town, under a disguise, like the caliphs of former times, learned about the matter. The son was brought trembling to the palace. "Of what religion art thou?" roared the pacha in a voice of thunder. The unhappy man was scarcely able to stammer that he was a Christian. "Well, show me the sign by which Christians recognise one another." The young man made the sign of the Cross, bearing his hand to his forehead, then to his breast: "In the name of the Father, of the Son ..." "Ah! ah!" exclaimed Djezzar in a bantering tone. "It seems to me that thy religion teaches thee that the Father ought to be above and the Son below. Carry out the rules of thy faith, if thou dost wish that thy head remains on thy shoulders." And the father, brought back from his vault immediately, with the stains of mouldiness which covered his body duly brushed away, found himself in the dry without knowing the reason. Lady Hester went to visit the Jew Malem Hazm, Soliman's minister and banker. He was the fashion at St. Jean d'Acre; he had only one eye and one ear and no nose. It was recognised that he had lived on terms of intimacy with the pacha. For his misfortune, he was, in fact, Djezzar's secretary. The latter had always under his cushions a long list of people condemned to death, like another little game of society. In a moment of idleness, he inscribed there Malem Hazm's name; but, thinking better of it immediately, he commuted the capital penalty to a few facial mutilations of little importance. When the Jew reappeared with a countenance reduced to its most simple expression, Djezzar burst out laughing. "In truth," he exclaimed, "I should never have believed that thou wouldst have become so ugly. If I could have doubted it, I would have left thee thy nose." Then approaching him and laying his hand on his shoulder, he continued: "Lucky Malem, you are my friend (he wrote, in fact, to the Porte skilful letters which, under the velvet of Oriental politeness, made them feel the threatening steel blade). Give thanks to God! for were it not for the affection that I bear thee, I should have thy head cut off." It was a pleasant thing to be one of his friends....