I Demand Only The Time To Go Home, The Time To
Return, And A Few Days To Stay, And I Will Come Back As Honestly As
Regulus Pasha Did To The Carthaginians, - I Will Come Back And Make
My Face White Before Your Highness."
Skinflint Beg's prayer for a reprieve was granted, and he returned
to his village, where he forthwith called the elders together.
"O
friends," he said, "complaints of our poverty and misery have
reached the Royal throne, and the benevolent heart of the Sovereign
has been melted by the words that have been poured into his ears.
'My heart yearns towards my people of El Muddee,' he says; 'I have
thought how to relieve their miseries. Near them lies the fruitful
land of El Guanee. It is rich in maize and cotton, in sesame and
barley; it is worth a thousand purses; but I will let it to my
children for seven hundred, and I will give over the rest of the
profit to them, as an alleviation for their affliction.'"
The elders of El Muddee knew the great value and fertility of the
lands of Guanee, but they doubted the sincerity of their governor,
who, however, dispelled their fears, and adroitly quickened their
eagerness to close with the proffered bargain. "I will myself
advance two hundred and fifty purses," he said; "do you take
counsel among yourselves, and subscribe the other five hundred; and
when the sum is ready, a deputation of you shall carry it to Cairo,
and I will come with my share; and we will lay the whole at the
feet of His Highness." So the grey-bearded ones of the village
advised with one another; and those who had been inaccessible to
bastinadoes, somehow found money at the calling of interest; and
the Sheikh, and they, and the five hundred purses, set off on the
road to the capital.
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