Yûsuf had burst into the room of the selamlik where his father was transacting business with the steward of his property. Regardless of the stranger’s presence, he gave way to grief and rage, falling prostrate on the pavement, tearing at it with his hands, and biting at it with his teeth convulsively. The steward, a person of discretion, rose at once and asked permission to retire. The Pasha nodded, and, when he was gone, bent over his demented child, inquiring of his cause of grief with heart near broken, for he feared the worst had happened. By dint of patience he elicited the simple facts, which, when he knew them, eased his mind so greatly that he smiled and rendered fervent thanks to the Most High. The Englishwoman was not dead; the poisonous attempt had failed; the vision of an angry Consul, void of decency, transgressing with investigations every man’s intrinsic right to sole and secret jurisdiction in his own harem, raising a scandal far more dreadful than the sad event, receded suddenly.