no more from any one, as his wazeers and governors ate half the
revenue cream each, and the sheïkhs drank half the revenue milk. The
fool was right.

The richer a man is, the less proportion he will have to pay, for he
can make it so agreeable--or disagreeable--for those entrusted with a
little brief authority. It is the struggling poor who have to pay
or go to prison, even if to pay they have to sell their means of
subsistence. Three courses lie before this final victim--to obtain
the protection of some influential name, native or foreign, to buy a
"friend at court," or to enter Nazarene service. But native friends
are uncertain and hard to find, and, above all, they may be alienated
by a higher bid from a rival or from a rapacious official. Such
affairs are of common occurrence, and harrowing tales might be told of
homes broken up in this way, of tortures inflicted, and of lives
spent in dungeons because display has been indulged in, or because an
independent position has been assumed under cover of a protection that
has failed. But what can one expect with such a standard of honour?

Foreigners, on the other hand, seldom betray their
_protégés_--although, to their shame be it mentioned, some in high
places have done so,--wherefore their protection is in greater demand;
besides which it is more effectual, as coming from outside, while no
Moor, however well placed, is absolutely secure in his own position.
Thus it is that the down-trodden natives desire and are willing to pay
for protection in proportion to their means; and it is this power
of dispensing protection which, though often abused, does more than
anything else to raise the prestige of the foreigner, and in turn to
protect him.