Once, on a pilgrimage to Hijaz, I was the fellow-traveller of some piously-disposed young men, and on a footing of familiarity and intimacy with them. From time to time we were humming a tune and chanting a spiritual hymn, and an abid, who bore us company, kept disparaging the morals of the dervishes, and was callous to their sufferings, till we reached the palm plantation of the tribe of Hulal, when a boy of a tawny complexion issued from the Arab horde and sung such a plaintive melody as would arrest the bird in its flight through the air. I remarked the abid's camel that it kicked up and pranced, and, throwing the abid, danced into the wilderness. I said: "O reverend Shaikh! that spiritual strain threw a brute into an ecstasy, and it is not in like manner working a change in you!--Knowest thou what that nightingale of the dawn whispered to me? What sort of man art thou, indeed, who art ignorant of love?--The camel is in an ecstasy of delight from the Arab's song. If thou hast no taste to relish this, thou art a cross-grained brute.--Now that the camel is elated with rapture and delight, if a man is insensible to these he is an ass.--_The zephyr, gliding through the verdure on the earth, shakes the twig of the ban-tree, but moves not the solid rock_.--Whatever thou beholdest is loud in extolling him. That heart which has an ear is full of the divine mystery. It is not the nightingale that alone serenades his rose; for every thorn on the rose-bush is a tongue in his or God's praise!" XXVII A king had reached the end of his days and had no heir to succeed him. He made his will, stating, "You will place the crown of sovereignty upon the head of whatever person first enters the city gate in the morning, and commit the kingdom to his charge." It happened that the first man that presented himself at the city gate was a beggar, who had passed his whole life in scraping broken meat and in patching rags. The ministers of state and nobles of the court fulfilled the conditions of the king's will, and laid the keys of the treasury and citadel at his feet. For a time the dervish governed the kingdom, till some of the chiefs of the empire swerved from their allegiance, and the princes of the territories on every side rose in opposition to him, and levied armies for the contest. In short, his troops and subjects were routed and subdued, and several of his provinces taken from him.