too the boundless gratitude of Mahomet; and how of all the kindnesses she
had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke
was the greatest. "It is certain," says Novalis, "my Conviction gains
infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in it." It is a boundless
favor.--He never forgot this good Kadijah. Long afterwards, Ayesha his
young favorite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished herself among the
Moslem, by all manner of qualities, through her whole long life; this young
brilliant Ayesha was, one day, questioning him: "Now am not I better than
Kadijah? She was a widow; old, and had lost her looks: you love me better
than you did her?"--" No, by Allah!" answered Mahomet: "No, by Allah! She
believed in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had but
one friend, and she was that!"--Seid, his Slave, also believed in him;
these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu Thaleb's son, were his first converts.

He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that; but the most treated it with
ridicule, with indifference; in three years, I think, he had gained but
thirteen followers. His progress was slow enough. His encouragement to go
on, was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man in such a case
meets. After some three years of small success, he invited forty of his
chief kindred to an entertainment; and there stood up and told them what
his pretension was: that he had this thing to promulgate abroad to all
men; that it was the highest thing, the one thing: which of them would
second him in that? Amid the doubt and silence of all, young Ali, as yet a
lad of sixteen, impatient of the silence, started up, and exclaimed in
passionate fierce language, That he would! The assembly, among whom was
Abu Thaleb, Ali's Father, could not be unfriendly to Mahomet; yet the sight
there, of one unlettered elderly man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on
such an enterprise against all mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the
assembly broke up in laughter. Nevertheless it proved not a laughable
thing; it was a very serious thing! As for this young Ali, one cannot but