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‘EAT, David,’ said Scherirah. |
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‘I will eat bread,’ answered Alroy. |
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‘What! have you had so much meat lately that you will refuse this delicate gazelle that I brought down this morning with my own lance? ’Tis food for a caliph.’ |
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‘I pray you give me bread.’ |
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‘Oh! bread if you like. But that a man should prefer bread to meat, and such meat as this, ’tis miraculous.’ |
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‘A thousand thanks, good Scherirah; but with our people the flesh of the gazelle is forbidden. It is unclean. Its foot is cloven.’* |
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‘I have heard of these things,’ replied Scherirah, with a thoughtful air. ‘My mother was a Jewess, and my father was a Kourd. Whichever be right, I hope to be saved.’ |
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‘There is but one God, and Mahomed is his prophet!’ exclaimed Kisloch; ‘though I drink wine. Your health, Hebrew.’ |
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‘I will join you,’ said the third robber. ‘My father was a Guebre,* and sacrificed his property to his faith; and the consequence is, his son has got neither.’ |
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‘As for me,’ said a fourth robber, of very dark complexion and singularly small bright eyes, ‘I am an Indian, and I believe in the great golden figure with carbuncle eyes, in the temple of Delhi.’* |
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‘I have no religion,’ said a tall negro in a red turban, grinning with his white teeth; ‘they have none in my country; but if I had heard of your God before, Calidas,* I would have believed in him.’ |
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‘I almost wish I had been a Jew,’ exclaimed Scherirah, musing. ‘My mother was a good woman.’ |
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‘The Jews are very rich,’ said the third robber. |
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‘When you get to Jerusalem, David, you will see the Christians,’ continued Scherirah. |
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‘The accursed Giaours,’* exclaimed Kisloch, ‘we are all against them.’ ‘With their white faces,’ exclaimed the negro. |
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‘And their blue eyes,’ said the Indian. |
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‘What can you expect of men who live in a country without a sun?’
observed the Guebre. |
