cups of green tea, as thick and sweet as syrup, drunk with many "Do me
the favour's," and countless "Good luck's." Last of all, the washing
of hands, and the fumigating of garments and beard and hair by the
live embers of scented wood burning in a brass censer, with incessant
exchanges of "The Prophet--God rest him--loved sweet odours almost as
much as sweet women."

But after supper all this ceremony fell away, and the feasters thawed
down to a warm and flowing brotherhood. Lolling at ease on their rugs,
trifling with their egg-like snuff-boxes, fumbling their rosaries for
idleness more than piety, stretching their straps, and jingling on the
pavement the carved ends of their silver knife-shields, they laughed and
jested, and told dubious stories, and held doubtful discourse generally.
The talk turned on the distinction between great sins and little ones.
In the circle of the Sultan it was agreed that the great sins were two:
unbelief in the Prophet, whereby a man became Jew and dog; and smoking
keef and tobacco, which no man could do and be of correct life and
unquestionable Islam. The atonement for these great sins were five
prayers a day, thirty-four prostrations, seventeen chapters of the
Koran, and as many inclinations. All the rest were little sins; and
as for murder and adultery, and bearing false witness--well, God was
Merciful, God was Compassionate, God forgave His poor weak children.

This led to stories of the penalises paid by transgressors of the great
sins. These were terrible. Putting on a profound air, the Vizier, a fat
man of fifty, told of how one who smoked tobacco and denied the Prophet
had rotted piecemeal; and of how another had turned in his grave with
his face from Mecca. Then the Kaid of Fez, head of the Mosque and
general Grand Mufti, led away with stories of the little sins. These
were delightful. They pictured the shifts of pretty wives, married