(_quatrain_ 93) a journey in the desert where a caravan, in order
to secure itself against surprises, is accustomed to send on a
spy, who scours the country from the summit of a hill or rock.
Should he perceive a sign of danger, he will wave his hand in
warning. From Lebid's picture of another journey--which the
pre-Islamic poet undertook to the coast lands of Hajar on the
Persian Gulf--we learn that when they entered a village he and
his party were greeted by the crowing of cocks and the shaking of
wooden rattles (_quatrain_ 95), which in the Eastern Christian
Churches are substituted for bells. . . . And the mediæval
leper, in his grey gown, was obliged to hold a similar object,
waving it about and crying as he went: "Unclean! unclean!"

An ambitious man desired, regardless of expense, to hand down his
name to posterity (_quatrain_ 99). "Write your name in a prayer,"
said Epictetus, "and it will remain after you." "But I would have
a crown of gold," was the reply. "If you have quite made up your
mind to have a crown," said Epictetus, "take a crown of roses,
for it is more beautiful." In the words of Heredia:

Déjà le Temps brandit l'arme fatale. As-tu
L'espoir d'éterniser le bruit de ta vertu?
Un vil lierre suffit à disjoindre un trophée;

Et seul, aux blocs épars des marbres triomphaux
Où ta gloire en ruine est par l'herbe étouffée,
Quelque faucheur Samnite ébréchera sa faulx.

Would we write our names so that they endure for ever? There was
in certain Arab circles a heresy which held that the letters of