arguments and adduced my proofs, I rely on your justice for an equitable decree; whether you ever saw a felon with his arms pinioned; a bankrupt immured in a jail; the veil of innocency rent, or the arm mutilated for theft, unless in consequence of poverty:  for lion-like heroes, instigated by want, have been caught undermining walls, and breaking into houses, and have got themselves suspended by the heels.  It is, moreover, possible that a poor man, urged to it by an inordinate appetite, may feel desirous of gratifying his lust; and he may fall the victim of some accursed sin.  And of the manifold means of mental tranquillity and corporeal enjoyment which are the special lots of the opulent, one is that every night they can command a fresh mistress, and every day possess a new charmer, such as must excite the envy of the glorious dawn, and stick the foot of the stately cypress in the mire of shame:—­’She had dipped her hands in the blood of her lovers, and tinged the tips of her fingers with jujubes’:—­so that it were impossible, with such lovely objects before their eyes, for them to desire what is forbidden or to wish to commit sin:—­Why should such a heart as the houris, or nymphs of Paradise, have captivated and plundered, show any way partial to the idols of Yaghma (a city in Turkestan famous for its beauties)?—­He who has in both his hands such dates as he can relish, will not think of throwing stones at the bunches of dates on their trees.  In common, such as are in indigent circumstances will contaminate the skirt of innocency with sin; and such as are suffering from hunger will steal bread:—­When a ravenous dog has found a piece of meat, he asks not, saying:  Is this the flesh of the prophet Salah’s camel or Antichrist’s ass?  Many are the chaste who, because of their poverty, have fallen into the sink of wickedness, and given their fair reputations to the blast of infamy:—­The virtue of temperance remains not with a state of being famished; and bankrupt circumstances will snatch the rein from the hand of abstemiousness.”

The moment I had finished this speech, the dervish, my antagonist, let the rein of forbearance drop from the hand of moderation; unsheathed the sabre of his tongue; set the steed of eloquence at full speed over the plain of arrogance; and, galloping up to me, said:  “You have so exaggerated in their praise, and amplified with such extravagance, that we might fancy them an antidote to the poison of poverty and a key to the store-house of Providence; yet they are a proud, self-conceited, fastidious, and overbearing set, insatiate after wealth and property, and ambitious of rank and dignity; who exchange not a word but to express insolence, or deign a look but to show contempt.  Men of science they call beggars, and the indigent they reproach for their wretched raggedness.  Proud of the property they possess, and vain of the rank they claim, they take the upper hand of all, and deem themselves everybody’s superior.  Nor do they ever condescend to return any person’s salutation, unmindful of the maxim of the wise:  That whoever is inferior to others in humility, and is their superior in opulence, though in appearance he be rich, yet in reality he is a beggar:—­If a worthless fellow, because of his wealth, treats a learned man with insolence, reckon him an ass, although he be the ambergris ox.”