"I can't stop to listen to you now. At the rising of the seven stars I
will send a slave to take you to my rooms. Till then you must stay in
your present lodging, for I must go to my patient."

"You must?--Very well,--then go and leave poor old Hib here to die.
I can't possibly live another hour among these creatures."

"What would you have me do then?"

"Let me live with you as long as we are in Persia."

"Have they treated you so very roughly?"

"I should think they had indeed. It is loathsome to think of. They
forced me to eat out of the same pot with them and cut my bread with the
same knife. An infamous Persian, who had lived many years in Egypt, and
travelled here with us, had given them a list of all the things and
actions, which we consider unclean. They took away my knife when I was
going to shave myself. A good-for-nothing wench kissed me on the
forehead, before I could prevent it. There, you needn't laugh; it will
be a month at least before I can get purified from all these pollutions.
I took an emetic, and when that at last began to take effect, they all
mocked and sneered at me. But that was not all. A cursed cook-boy
nearly beat a sacred kitten to death before my very eyes. Then an
ointment-mixer, who had heard that I was your servant, made that godless
Bubares ask me whether I could cure diseases of the eye too. I said yes,
because you know in sixty years it's rather hard if one can't pick up
something from one's master. Bubares was interpreter between us, and the
shameful fellow told him to say that he was very much disturbed about a