“When we entered this sumptuously furnished office, the squat figure in the chair under the picture of Boss Tweed, remained as immobile as a fixture and did not as much as reply to our salaam. But he pointed disdainfully to seats in the corner of the room, saying, ‘Sit down there,’ in a manner quite in keeping with his stogies raised on the desk directly in our face.
Such freedom, nay, such bestiality, I could never tolerate. Indeed, I prefer the suavity and palaver of Turkish officials, no matter how crafty and corrupt, to the puffing, spitting manners of these come-up-from-the-shamble men.
But Khalid could sit there as immobile as the Boss himself, and he did so, billah ! For he was thinking all the while, as he told me when we came out, not of such matters as grate on the susceptibilities of a poet, but on the one sole idea of how such a bad titman could lead by the nose so many good people.”
Shakib then proceeds to give us a verbatim report of the interview. It begins with the Boss’ question, “What do you mean by writing such a letter?” and ends with this other, “What do you mean by immanent morality?”
The reader, given the head and tail of the matter, can supply the missing parts. Or, given its two bases, he can construct this triangle of Politics, Ethics, and the Constable, with Khalid’s letter, offended Majesty, and a prison cell, as its three turning points.
We extract from the report, however, the concluding advice of the Boss. For when he asked Khalid again what he meant by immanent morality, he continued in a crescendo of indignation:
“You mean the morality of hayseeds, and priests, and philosophical fools? That sort of morality will not