in New York had already done its evil work. And—double—double—wherever the Dervish goes. Especially in Bohemia, where many of its daughters set their caps for him.
And here, he is neither shy nor slow nor visionary. Nor shall his theory of immanent morality trouble him for the while. Reality is met with reality on solid, though sometimes slippery, ground.
His animalism, long leashed and starved, is eager for prey. His Phoenician passion is awake. And fortunately, Khalid finds himself in Bohemia where the poison and the antidote are frequently offered together. Here the spell of one sorceress can straightway be offset by that of her sister.
And we have our Scribe’s word for it, that the Dervish went as far and as deep with the houris, as the doctors eventually would permit him. That is why, we believe, in commenting upon his adventures there, he often quotes the couplet,
“In my sublunar paradise There’s plenty of honey—and plenty of flies.”
The flies in his cup, however, can not be detected with the naked eye. They are microbes rather—microbes which even the physicians can not manage with satisfaction. For it must be acknowledged that Khalid’s immanent morality and intellectualism suffered an interregnum with the houris. Reckless, thoughtless, heartless, he plunges headlong again. It is said in al-Hadith that he who guards himself against the three cardinal evils, namely, of the tongue ( laklaka ), of the stomach ( kabkaba ), and of the sex ( zabzaba ), will have guarded himself against all evil. But Khalid reads not in the Hadith of the Prophet. And that he became audacious, edacious, and loquacious, is evident from such wit and flippancy as he here likes to display. “Some women,” says he, “might be likened to whiskey, others to seltzer water; and many are those who, like myself, care neither for the soda or the whiskey straight. A ‘highball’ I will have.”