the caravan, and halted towards morning on the skirts of the wilderness.
One mystically distracted, who accompanied us on that journey, set up a
loud lamentation at dawn, went a-wandering into the desert, and did not
take a moment's rest. Next day I said to him, "What condition was that?"
He replied, "I remarked the nightingales that they had come to carol in
the groves, the pheasants to prattle on the mountains, the frogs to
croak in the pools, and the wild beasts to roar in the forests, and
thought with myself, saying, It cannot be generous that all are awake in
God's praise and I am wrapt up in the sleep of forgetfulness!--Last
night a bird was carolling towards the morning; it stole my patience
and reason, my fortitude and understanding. My lamentation had perhaps
reached the ear of one of my dearly-beloved friends. He said, 'I did not
believe that the singing of a bird could so distract thee!' I answered,
This is not the duty of the human species, that the birds are singing
God's praise and that I am silent."


XXVI

Once, on a pilgrimage to Hijaz, I was the fellow-traveller of some
piously-disposed young men, and on a footing of familiarity and intimacy
with them. From time to time we were humming a tune and chanting a
spiritual hymn, and an abid, who bore us company, kept disparaging the
morals of the dervishes, and was callous to their sufferings, till we
reached the palm plantation of the tribe of Hulal, when a boy of a tawny
complexion issued from the Arab horde and sung such a plaintive melody
as would arrest the bird in its flight through the air. I remarked the
abid's camel that it kicked up and pranced, and, throwing the abid,
danced into the wilderness. I said: "O reverend Shaikh! that spiritual
strain threw a brute into an ecstasy, and it is not in like manner