Our conversation turned inevitably upon politics, and thinking my companions must be Nationalists, as are most Persians nowadays, I began to describe some of the doings of the Majlis in Teheran during 1906 and 1907. They listened in silence for some time, offering no opinion, but when I ceased, the consul began with great enthusiasm a flowing eulogium of Muhammad Ali Shah, cursing in the most powerful language the revolutionary movement that tended to put power in the hands of mean schemers, plebeians, and heretics. His arguments hung upon the nail of fanaticism, as I am afraid most of the Royalist arguments ever did in those days, and warming to his subject he read me a homily upon the evil of allowing my young mind to be led away by the specious arguments of them who called upon the saints to witness the right of their evil actions. Apt quotations from the Quran he poured out upon me, growing ever more excited, and at length ceased suddenly, out of breath, and hot. I managed to steer him away from this subject, and he began to relate his difficulties and the qualms of conscience he had had in the matter of his late wife, whom, suffering from some terrible internal disease, he had taken to Mosul to the English doctor there. [Sidenote: THE FERANGI DOCTOR] “This matter,” he said, “is a constant source of anxiety to me, for I have not the satisfaction of knowing that God sanctioned the means by the end attained, for she died. I took her from Sulaimania to Mosul in a palanquin, and laid her before the European’s door, together with presents of gold and silver, and a bottle of brandy I had bought specially, knowing such things acceptable to the Christians. And he was moved to pity, for he was a generous man, though an infidel, and, refusing the presents, took her in. And many days he spent, labouring with all his knowledge to cure her. Despite the shame of this discovery of her nakedness, and the ridicule it might pour upon me, I persisted, but He who knows took her life. And I yet think that her death was perhaps an expression of the Almighty displeasure, for though but a woman she was a Muslim, and the wife of a Muslim, and the procedure was not in propriety.” He seemed relieved when I was able to quote him the case of a High Priest’s wife in Shiraz who had been cured by a European doctor. After this the meeting broke up, and he departed, and I after him. I subsequently learned that with the appointment of consul he combined the craft of watchmaking, and was known as Mirza Saatchi--“Mr Watchmaker.” The old man, the proprietor of the sweetstuff shop, had something to say before I left, and he addressed me in his feeble Persian mixed with Kurdish: