[p.137]accompany southern and eastern tipsiness.  Ali Agha, indeed, occasionally took up the bottle of perfume, filled the palm of his right hand, and dashed it in my face:  I followed his example, but our pleasantries went no further.

Presently my companion started a grand project, namely, that I should entice the respectable Haji Wali into the room, where we might force him to drink.  The idea was facetious; it was making a Bow-street magistrate polk at a casino.  I started up to fetch the Haji; and when I returned with him Ali Agha was found in a new stage of “freshness.”  He had stuck a green-leaved twig upright in the floor, and had so turned over a gugglet of water, that its contents trickled slowly, in a tiny stream under the verdure; whilst he was sitting before it mentally gazing, with an outward show of grim Quixotic tenderness, upon the shady trees and the cool rills of his fatherland.  Possibly he had peopled the place with “young barbarians at play;” for verily I thought that a tear “which had no business there” was glistening in his stony eye.

The appearance of Haji Wali suddenly changed the scene.  Ali Agha jumped up, seized the visitor by the shoulder, compelled him to sit down, and, ecstasied by the old man’s horror at the scene, filled a tumbler, and with the usual grotesque grimaces insisted upon its being drunk off.  Haji Wali stoutly refused; then Ali Agha put it to his own lips, and drained it, with a hurt feeling and reproachful aspect.  We made our unconvivial friend smoke a few puffs, and then we returned to the charge.  In vain the Haji protested that throughout life he had avoided the deadly sin; in vain he promised to drink with us to-morrow,-in vain he quoted the Koran, and alternately coaxed, and threatened us with the police.  We were inexorable.  At last the Haji started upon his feet, and rushed away, regardless of any thing but escape,

[p.138]leaving his Tarbush, his slippers, and his pipe, in the hands of the enemy.  The host did not dare to pursue his recreant guest beyond the door, but returning he carefully sprinkled the polluting liquid on the cap, pipe, and shoes, and called the Haji an ass in every tongue he knew.

Then we applied ourselves to supper, and dispatched the soup, the stew, and the Salatah.  A few tumblers and pipes were exhausted to obviate indigestion, when Ali Agha arose majestically, and said that he required a troop of dancing girls to gladden his eyes with a ballet.

I represented that such persons are no longer admitted into Caravanserais.[FN#29] He inquired, with calm ferocity, “who hath forbidden it?” I replied “the Pasha;” upon which Ali Agha quietly removed his cap, brushed it with his dexter fore-arm, fitted it on his forehead, raking forwards, twisted his mustachios to the sharp point of a single hair, shouldered his pipe, and moved towards the door, vowing that he would make the Pasha himself come, and dance before us.