In the mean time, my mind ponders over it day and night, whenever I am quiet and feel myself composed and collected.

When I come to a decision, I will impart it to you alone, and from that moment you shall have over me the authority of a father." At these words the worthy Yusuf, his eyes wet with tears, placed his left hand over my head, and the first two fingers of the right hand on my forehead, saying: "Continue to act in that way, my dear son, and be certain that you can never act wrongly." "But," I said to him, "one thing might happen, Zelmi might not accept me." "Have no anxiety about that.

My daughter loves you; she, as well as my wife and her nurse, sees you every time that we dine together, and she listens to you with pleasure." "Does she know that you are thinking of giving her to me as my wife ?" "She knows that I ardently wish you to become a true believer, so as to enable me to link her destiny to yours." "I am glad that your habits do not permit you to let me see her, because she might dazzle me with her beauty, and then passion would soon have too much weight in the scale; I could no longer flatter myself that my decision had been taken in all the unbiased, purity of my soul." Yusuf was highly delighted at hearing me speak in that manner, and I spoke in perfect good faith.

The mere idea of seeing Zelmi caused me to shudder.

I felt that, if I had fallen in love with her, I would have become a Mussulman in order to possess her, and that I might soon have repented such a step, for the religion of Mahomet presented to my eyes and to my mind nothing but a disagreeable picture, as well for this life as for a future one.