It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these five-and-twenty bad years past.

I can carry it no longer.

Take it." In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand as he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of the patio.
"Fool!" he cried.

"So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most merciful God, who would have believed it?
Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compassionate!" Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.
"Who said it was the Sultan ?" he cried again.

"He was a fool.