"May your highness's shadow never be less!" said the cadi, as he entered. "Mobarek! may you be fortunate!" replied the pacha. "What is this we hear, cadi? There is a goat-skin bag and a girl, that are not known to our justice. Are there secrets like those hid in the well of Kashan--speak! what dirt have you been eating?" "What shall I say?" replied the cadi; "I am but as dirt; the money is here, and the girl is here. Is the pacha to be troubled with every woman's noise, or am I to come before him with a piece or two of gold--Min Allah--God forbid! Have I not here the money, and _seven more purses_? Was not the girl visited by the angel of death; and could she appear before your presence lean as a dog in the bazaar? Is she not here? Have I spoken well?" "It is well said, cadi. Murakhas--you are dismissed." The Frank physician was then fined one hundred sequins more; fifty for feeling the pulse, and fifty more for looking at a Turkish woman's tongue. The young woman was dismissed to the pacha's harem, the old woman to curse as much as she pleased, and Hudusi with full permission to _doubt_ anything but the justice of the pacha. Chapter XVII "Mashallah! God be praised! we are rid of that fellow and his doubts. I have been thinking, Mustapha, as I smoked the pipe of surmise, and arrived at the ashes of certainty, that a man who had so many doubts, could not be a true believer. I wish I had sent him to the mollahs; we might have been amused with his being impaled, which is a rare object now-a-days." "God is great," replied Mustapha, "and a stake is a strong argument, and would remove many doubts. But I have an infidel in the court-yard who telleth of strange things. He hath been caught like a wild beast; it is a Frank Galiongi, who hath travelled as far as that son of Shitan, Huckaback; he was found in the streets, overpowered by the forbidden juice, after having beaten many of your highness's subjects, and the cadi would have administered the bamboo, but he was as a lion, and he scattered the slaves as chaff, until he fell, and could not rise again. I have taken him from the cadi, and brought him here. He speaketh but the Frankish tongue, but the sun who shineth on me knoweth I have been in the Frank country; and Inshallah! please the Lord, I can interpret his meaning." "What sort of a man may he be, Mustapha?" "He is a baj baj--a big belly--a stout man; he is an Anhunkher, a swallower of iron. He hath sailed in the war vessels of the Franks. He holdeth in one hand a bottle of the forbidden liquor; in the other, he shakes at those who would examine him, a thick stick. He hath a large handful of the precious weed which we use for our pipes in one of his cheeks, and his hair is hanging behind down to his waist, in a rolled up mass, as thick as the arm of your slave."