they were made, the shirt of selected Angora wool, the cloak of camel’s hair, in its fineness iridescent and soft as velvet. She saw in the girdle an empty scabbard for a yatagan elaborately covered with brilliants. She saw on the head a kerchief of mixed silk and cotton, tasselled, heavily striated red and yellow, and secured by the usual cord; but she scarcely more than noticed them—the air of the man, high, stately, king-like, was a superior attraction, and she gazed at his face unconscious that her own was uncovered.
The features were regular, the complexion sunburned to the hue of reddish copper, the beard thin, the nose sharp, the cheeks hollow, the eyes, through the double shade of brows and kerchief, glittered like balls of polished black amber. His hands were crossed above the girdle after the manner of Eastern servants before acknowledged superiors; his salutation was expressive of most abject homage; yet when he raised himself, and met the glance of the Princess, his eyes lingered, and brightened, and directly he cast off or forgot his humility, and looked lordlier than an Emir boasting of his thousand tents, with ten spears to each, and a score of camels to the spear. She endured the gaze awhile; for it seemed she had seen the face before—where, she could not tell; and when, as presently happened, she began to feel the brightness of the eyes intenser growing, the sensation reminded her of the Governor at the landing. Could this be he? No, the countenance here was of a man already advanced in life. And why should the Governor resort to disguise? The end, nevertheless, was the same as on the landing—she drew down the veil. Then he became humble again, and spoke, his eyes downcast, his hands crossed:
“This faithful servant”—he pointed to the eunuch “my friend “—the eunuch crossed his hands, and assumed an attitude of pleased attention—“brought me from his master—may the most Merciful and Compassionate continue a pillow to the good man here and to his soul hereafter!—how a kinswoman of the Emperor whose capital is to the earth a star, and he as the brightness thereof, had taken refuge with him from the storm, and was now his guest, and languishing for want of amusement. Would I tell her a story? I have a horde of parables, tales, and traditions, and many nations have contributed to it; but, alas, O Princess! they are simple, and such as beguile tentmen and tentwomen shut in by the desert, their fancies tender as children’s. I fear your laughter. But here I am; and as the night bird sings when the moon is risen, because the moon is beautiful and must be saluted, even so I am obedient. Command me.”
The speech was in Greek, with the slightest imperfection of accent; at the conclusion the Princess was silent.
“Knowest thou “—she at length said— “knowest thou of one Hátim, renowned as a warrior and poet of the Arabs?”
The eunuch saw the reference, and smiled. Asking of Hátim now was only another form of inquiry after his master; not merely had the latter been in her mind; she wished to know more about him. On his part, the story-teller arose from his servile posture, and asked with the animation of one to whom a favorite theme is presented:
“Noble lady, know you aught of the desert?”
“I have never been there,” the Princess answered.
“Though not beautiful, it is the home of mysteries,” he said, with growing enthusiasm. “When he whom in the same breath you worship as God and the Son of God— an opposition beyond the depth of our simple faith—made ready to proclaim himself, he went for a time into the Wilderness, and dwelt there. So likewise our Prophet, seeing the dawn of his day, betook himself to Hivá, a rock, bleak, barren, waterless. Why, O Princess, if not for purification, and because God of preference has founded his dwelling there, wasting it indeed the better to nurse his goodness in a perfected solitude? Granting this, why may I not assert without shocking you that the sons of the desert are the noblest of men?—
“Such was Hátim!
“In the Hijaz and the Nejd, they tell of him thus:
“In the day the Compassionate set about world-making, which is but a pastime with him, nor nearly so much as nest-building to a mother-dove, he rested. The mountains and rivers and seas were in their beds, and the land was variegated to please him, here a forest, there a grassy plain; nothing remained unfinished except the sand oceans, and they only wanted water. He rested.
“Now, if, with their sky, a sun-field in the day, a gallery of stars at night, and their winds, flying from sea to sea, but gathering no taint, the deserts are treeless, and unknowing the sweetness of gardens and the glory of grass, it was not by accident or forget-fulness; for with him, the Compassionate, the Merciful, there are no accidents or lapses of any kind. He is all attention, and ever present. Thus the Throne verse— ‘Drowsiness overcomes him not nor sleep. His firmament spans the Heaven and the Earth, and the care of them does not distress him.’
“Why then the yellowness and the burning, the sameness and solitude, and the earth intolerant of rain and running stream, and of roads and paths—why, if there was neither accident nor forgetfulness?
“He is the High and the Great! Accuse him not!
“In that moment of rest, not from weariness or overburden, but to approve the work done, and record the approval as a judgment, he said, speaking to his Almightiness as to a familiar: ‘As it is it shall stay. A time will come when with men I, and the very name of me, shall go out utterly like the green of last year’s leaf. He who walks in a garden thinks of it only; but he who abides in a desert, wanting to see the beautiful, must look into the sky, and looking there he shall be reminded of me, and say aloud and as a lover, ‘There is no God but him, the Compassionate, the Merciful…. The eyes see him not, but he seeth the eyes; and He is the Gracious, the Knowing.’ … So also comes a time when religion shall be without heart, dead, and the quickening of worship lost in idolatry; when men shall cry, God, my God, to stones and graven images, and sing to hear their singing, and the loud music it goes with. And that time shall be first in lands of growth and freshness, in cities where comforts and luxuries are as honey in hives after the flowering of palms. Wherefore—Lo, the need of deserts. There I shall never be forgotten. And out of them, out of their hardness and heat, out of their yellow distances and drouth, religion shall arise again, and go forth purified unto universality; for I shall be always present there, a life-giver. And against those days of evil, I shall keep men there, the best of their kind, and their good qualities shall not rust; they shall be brave, for I may want swords; they shall keep the given word, for as I am the Truth, so shall my chosen be; there shall be no end to charity among them, for in such lands charity is life, and must take every form, friendship, love of one another, love of giving, and hospitality, unto which are riches and plenty. And in their worship, I shall be first, and honor next. And as Truth is the Soul of the World, it being but another of my names, for its salvation they shall speak with tongues of fire, this one an orator, that one a poet; and living in the midst of death, they shall fear me not at all, but dishonor more. Mine are the Sons of the Desert—the Word-Keepers!—the Unconquered and Conquerless! For my name’s sake, I nominate them Mine, and I alone am the High and the Great … . And there shall be amongst-them exemplars of this virtue and that one singly; and at intervals through the centuries standards for emulation among the many, a few, in whom all the excellences shall be blent in indivisible comeliness.’
“So came Hátim, of the Bene-Tayyi, lustrous as the moon of Ramazan to eager watchers on high hilltops, and better than other men, even as all the virtues together are better than any one of them, excepting charity and love of God.
“Now Hátim’s mother was a widow, poor, and without relations, but beloved by the Compassionate, and always in his care, because she was wise beyond the men of her time, and kept his laws, as they were known, and taught them to her son. One day a great cry arose in the village. Everybody rushed to see the cause, and then joined in the clamor.
“Up in the north there was an appearance the like of which had never been beheld, nor were there any to tell what it was from hearsay. Some pooh-poohed,
