Hassan retired from Melekshah’s court to Rei, and then to Ispahan, where he kept himself secluded in the house of Abufasl, in order to escape the inquiries of Nisam-ol-mulk. He soon gained over the Reis to his opinions, and lived sometime with him. One day, he concluded the complaints which he was making against Melekshah and his vizier, with the expression, that “if he had had at his bidding but two devoted friends, he would soon have overturned the power of the Turk and the peasant” (the sultan and the vizier). These remarkable words unveil the profound and extensive plans of the founder of the Assassins, who already contemplated the ruin of kings and ministers. The canon of the whole policy of this order of murderers is comprised in them. Opinions are powerless, so long as they only confuse the brain, without arming the hand. Scepticism and free-thinking, as long as they occupied only the minds of the indolent and philosophical, have caused the ruin of no throne, for which purpose religious and political fanaticism are the strongest levers in the hands of nations. It is nothing to the ambitious man what people believe, but it is everything to know how he may turn them, for the execution of his projects. He is satisfied with finding ready slaves, faithful satellites, and blind instruments. What may not two such, animated by the soul of a third, and obeying his behests, accomplish? This truth, which lay open to the enterprising soul of Hassan, found no access to the understanding of his host, the Reis Abufasl, one of the shrewdest and most intelligent men of his time. He considered these words as a sign of madness, and doubted not that they were the effusion of delirium; for, thought he, how could it occur to a man of sound intellect, to place himself, with two adherents, in opposition to Melekshah, whose power extended from Antioch to Kashgar. Without imparting his thoughts to his guest, he placed before him, at breakfast and dinner, in hopes of restoring his health, aromatic drinks and dishes, prepared with saffron, which were considered as strengtheners of the brain. Hassan guessed his host’s design, and prepared to leave him. The latter in vain employed all his eloquence to retain him;[38] he soon after repaired to Egypt.[39] When, twenty years afterwards, Hassan had possessed himself of the strong fortress of Alamut, and the Vizier Nisam-ol-mulk had fallen under the daggers of his assassins, and the Sultan Melekshah had followed him to the grave soon after,—the Reis Abufasl was at the castle, as one of the most zealous of Hassan’s partisans. “Reis,” said the latter to him, “which of us two was out of his senses, I or thou? and which would the aromatic drinks, and dishes dressed with saffron, which thou settedst before me at Ispahan, have best suited,—thee or me? Thou seest how I have kept my word, as soon as I found two trusty friends.”