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out by the gate of the city and [men’s] eyes were veiled from us, by His commandment, [who] when He desireth aught, saith to it, ‘Be,’ and it is;[1] so that I journeyed with her in safety to Mecca, where she abode by the House of God seven years, till the days of her life came to an end. The earth of Mecca was her tomb, and never saw I any more steadfast in prayer and fasting than she, may God send down His mercies upon her and have compassion on him who saith:
When they brought me the physician (and indeed upon my face Sickness and constant floods of tears had left full many a trace,)
He drew the veil away and saw nought neath it but a soul Sans life or body or aught else to fill the empty place.
“Indeed,” said he to them, “a thing uneath is this to cure; Love hath a secret not to win by sheer conjecture’s grace.”
Quoth they, “An one know not what is therein and if there be No way its nature to define and symptoms to embrace,
How then shall medicine thereon have anywise effect?” Leave me; indeed, I will not judge, by guess-work, of the case.
THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE.
A certain prophet once worshipped on a high mountain, at whose foot was a spring of running water, and he was wont to sit by day on the mountain-top, where none could see him, calling upon the name of God the Most High and watching those who came to the spring. One day, as he sat looking on the spring, there came up a horseman, who dismounted thereby and taking a bag from his neck, laid it down beside him, after which he drank of the water and rested awhile, then mounted and rode away, leaving the bag behind him. Presently up came another man, to drink of the spring, who saw the bag and finding it full of gold, took it up and made off with it in safety, after he had drunken. A little after, came a woodcutter, with a heavy
- ↑ Koran xxxvi. 82.
