But if you raise your eyes to look at the interior of the dome--the inside, as it were, of the strange dervish hat--you will see shining between the clusters of painted and gilded stalactites a number of windows of exquisite colouring, little windows that seem to be constellations of emeralds and rubies and sapphires.

And the birds, you may be sure, have their nests also in the house of the holy one.
They are wont indeed to soil the carpets and the mats on which the worshippers kneel, and their nests are so many blots up there amid the gildings of the carved cedarwood; but then their song, the symphony that issues from that aviary, is so sweet to the living who pray and to the dead who dream.

.

.

.
***** But yet, when all is said, these mosques seem somehow to be wanting.
They do not wholly satisfy you.