the whole night, and held the precious Koran open on my lap, while the
company around us were fast asleep. I said to my father: "Not an
individual of these will raise his head that he may perform his
genuflections, or ritual of prayer; but they are all so sound asleep,
that you might conclude they were dead." He replied: "O emanation of
your father, you had also better have slept than that you should thus
calumniate the failings of mankind.--The braggart can discern only his
own precious person; he will draw the veil of conceit all around him.
Were fortune to bestow upon him God's all-searching eye, he would find
nobody weaker than himself."

* * * * *


X

On one occasion, at the metropolitan mosque of Balbek, I was holding
forth, by way of admonition to a congregation cold and dead at heart,
and not to be moved from the materialism of this world into the paths of
mysticism. I perceived that the spirit of my discourse was making no
impression, nor were the sparks of my enthusiasm likely to strike fire
into their humid wood. I grew weary of instructing brutes, and of
holding up a mirror to an assembly of the blind; but the door of
exposition was thrown open, and the chain of argument extended; and in
explanation of this text in the Koran--_We are nearer to him_ (God)
_than the vein of his neck_.--I had reached that passage of my sermon
where I thus express myself:--"Such a mistress as is closer to me in her
affection than I am to myself, but this is marvellous that I am
estranged from her. What shall I say, and to whom can I tell it, that
she lies on my bosom and I am alienated from her."