Staves of Doctrine 



gate, and a fresh offender was brought in. He was an old 

 acquaintance, having only been let out of prison a week ago, 

 and now he had been caught again, stealing a bunch of 

 carrots in the market-place. He was very vociferous in his 

 defence, but in the most brilliant crisis of his harangue, as 

 soon as he had been shouldered opposite the prison-door, it 

 opened with a crash of bolts and chains — they gave him a 

 slap on the back, and in he leapt, head foremost, over the 

 high stone threshold ; the door crashed to again, and there 

 was an end of him. There was something irresistibly 

 ludicrous in the extremely sudden disposal of this turbulent 

 purloiner of vegetables, of which a description, necessarily 

 telling a number of simultaneous occurrences one after 

 another, can give but little idea. 



We presented the prisoners with a small contribution for 

 bread, which they clamorously demanded, and gave the 

 father of the prison a large cigar. Going out of the castle, 

 we sat down on a stone bench along the wall, beneath the 

 shade of a tower. Here a small crowd of infidels gathered 

 to see us light our pipes with a burning glass, after which 

 they wished to have their fingers burned ; and we fell into 

 a religious discussion, carried on at first by short staves from 

 the Koran, of which, having exhausted our stock ineffec- 

 tually, we finished off the argument with our long broom- 

 sticks ; these we applied to their shins ; for they could not 

 keep their tempers when we quoted Mahomet to prove that 

 both Christians and Jews might be saved, if they believed in 

 God and the last day, and did virtuously. 



As we descended through the town, we were seized 

 upon by Israelites and carried into many shops, where they 

 tempted us ; but we would not buy anything, none of 

 them being equal to the upstairs establishment, which I had 

 seen before breakfast. Thither we went and instituted 



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