The Mercy of Allah: Essay. Hilaire Belloc

the poor youth having innocently returned that very night to the city, was seized by the guard and beheaded. Ya, ya,’ said the good old man, throwing up his hands, ‘the days increase, and their evil increases with them!’ ”

      At this moment the hoarse and discordant voice of the Public Crier croaked its first note from the neighbouring turret, and the nephews, who had sat enraptured at their uncle’s tale, knew that it was time to disperse. The eldest brother therefore said:

      “O uncle; before we go let me express the thanks of all of us for your enrapturing story. But let me also express our bewilderment at the absence of all plan in your singular adventures. For though we have listened minutely to all you have said, we cannot discover what art you showed in the achievement of any purpose. For instance, how could you know that the pearls were false?”

      “I did not know it, my dear nephew,” replied the great Merchant with beautiful simplicity, “and the whole was the Mercy of Allah! … But come, the hour of prayer is announced, and we must, following the invariable custom of the Faithful, make yet another joint in my singular tale. Come, therefore, on this day week, shortly after the last of the public executions of the vulgar, and I will tell you of my further fortunes: for you must understand that the 12,000 dinars of which my story now leaves me possessed are”—and here the honest old man yawned again and waved his hand—“but a flea-bite to a man like me.”

      His seven little nephews bowed repeatedly, and, walking backwards without a trip, disappeared through the costly tapestries of their uncle’s apartments.

      AL-TAWAJIN

      That is:

       The Pipkins

CHAPTER III

       ENTITLED AL-TAWAJIN, OR THE PIPKINS

       Table of Contents

      On the appointed day of the next week, when, with the hour of public executions, the noon-day amusements of the city come to an end, and the citizens betake themselves to the early afternoon’s repose, the seven boys were once more seated in the presence of their uncle, whom they discovered in a radiant humour.

      He welcomed them so warmly that they imagined for a moment he might be upon the point of offering them sherbet, sweetmeats, or even money; they were undeceived, however, when the excellent but extremely wealthy old man, drawing his purse lovingly through his fingers, ordered to have poured out for each of them by a slave a further draught of delicious cold water, put himself at his ease for a long story, and resumed his tale:

      “You will remember, my delightful nephews,” he said, “how I found myself in the hermit’s hut without a friend in the world, and with a capital of no more than twelve thousand dinars which I had carried thither in a sack upon donkey-back. Indeed, it was entirely due to the Mercy of Allah that my small capital was even as large as it was: for had the merchant in the bazaar discovered the pearls to be false he would not only have offered me far less but might possibly, after having disposed of the pearls, have given me over to the police. As it was, Heaven had been kind to me, though not bountiful, and I still had to bethink me what to do next if I desired to increase my little treasure.

      “Taking leave, therefore, of the good hermit, I pressed into his hand a small brass coin the superscription of which was unknown to me and which I therefore feared I might have some difficulty in passing. I assured my kind host that it was a coin of the second Caliph Omar and of value very far superior to any modern gold piece of a similar size. As the hermit, like many other saintly men, was ignorant of letters, his gratitude knew no bounds. He dismissed me with a blessing so long and complicated that I cannot but ascribe to it some part of the good fortune which next befell me.

      “For you must know that when, after laying in stores at a neighbouring village, I had driven my donkey forward for nearly a week over barren and uninhabited mountains, and when I had nearly exhausted my provision of dried cakes and wine (a beverage which our religion allows us to consume when no one is by), I was delighted to come upon a fertile valley entirely closed in by high, precipitous cliffs save at one issue, where a rough track led from this enchanted region to the outer world. In this valley I discovered, to my astonishment, manners to be so primitive or intelligence so low that the whole art of money-dealing was ignored by the inhabitants and by the very Governors themselves.

      “The King (who, I am glad to say, was of the Faithful) had, indeed, promulgated laws against certain forms of fraud which he imagined to be denounced in the Koran; but these were of so infantile a character that a man of judgment could very easily avoid them in any plans he might frame for the people’s betterment and his own. The population consisted entirely of soldiers and rustics, among all of whom not one could be discovered capable of calculating with justice a compound interest for ten years.

      “Under these circumstances my only difficulty lay in choosing what form my first enterprise should take. After a little thought I decided that what we call in Bagdad an Amalgamation of Competing Interests would be no bad beginning.

      “I began with due caution by investing a couple of thousand dinars in the merchandise of a potter who had recently died and whose widow needed ready cash to satisfy the sacred demands of the dead. She spent the money in the ornamentation of his tomb, with which unproductive expenditure the foolish woman was in no small degree concerned.”

      Here the eldest of the nephews interrupted Mahmoud to ask, most respectfully, why with a capital of twelve thousand dinars he had used but two, and why he had begun his experiment upon the petty business of a poor widow.

      “My son,” said his uncle affectionately, “you do well to ask these questions. They show a reasoned interest in the great art of Getting. Well then, as to the smallness of my beginning, it was, I hope, due to humility. For ostentation is hateful. But a good deed is never thrown away—and how useful I found this reserve of ten thousand dinars (which I had in my meekness kept aside) you shall soon learn.

      “As to why I began operations in the kiln of this poor widow, it was because I have ever loved the little ones of this world and aided them to my best endeavour. This charitable action also turned out to be wise, as such actions often do; for I could thus proceed at first unnoticed and begin my new adventures without exciting any embarrassing attention.

      “I continued to live in the same small hut I had hired on my arrival, under the floor of which I kept my modest capital; and I put it about, as modesty demanded, that I was almost destitute.

      “As it was indifferent to me for the moment whether I obtained a return upon this paltry investment or no, I was able to sell my wares at very much the same sum as they had cost me, and as I had bought the whole stock cheap, that sum was less than the cost of manufacture. There was a considerable store of pipkins in the old sheds, and while I sold them off at charitable rates (very disconcerting to other merchants), I had time to consider my next step.

      “Upon this next step I soon determined. When, with due delay, my original stock of pipkins had been sold, I purchased a small consignment of clay, I relit the fires in the kiln, I hired a couple of starving potters, and I began to manufacture.

      “The fame of my very cheap pipkins had spread, as was but natural, and secured me an increasing number of customers for my newly made wares. But I thought it wrong to debauch the peasants by selling them their pots under cost price any longer. I was constrained by the plainest rule of duty to raise my prices to the cost of manufacture—though no more, keeping Justice as my guiding star. For, depend upon it, my dear nephews, in business as in every other walk of life an exact rectitude alone can lead us to the most dazzling rewards.

      “This price of mine was still lower than that of all the other pipkin-makers, who had been accustomed from immemorial time to the base idea of profit, and were in a perpetual surmise what secret powers I had to permit me such quotations. But I made no mystery of the affair. I allowed all my friends to visit my simple factory and I explained