he death of the unfortunate
nasakchi, and was mixing a considerable portion of the marvellous in his
narrative, when the chief executioner, from the middle of his devotions,
cried out, '_Een derough est,_'--'that's a lie--have patience, and I
will tell you how it was,' and then went on with his holy invocations.
As soon as they were over, and almost before he had finished his last
prostration, he began his story, relating the fact with infinitely more
exaggeration than the master of the ceremonies had done, and finishing
by a round assertion, that the Frank had bled the poor man to death,
after the Persian doctor had brought him to life only by shaking
him.[63]

During the chief executioner's narration, Mirza Ahmak entered the room,
and far from denying what was asserted of the two doctors, he confirmed
it the more by new and stronger circumstances, and then finished
by pointing to me, and said, 'This is he who would have saved the
nasakchi's life, if he had not been prevented.' Upon this, the eyes of
all present were turned upon me, and I was called upon to relate the
whole circumstance as it had happened, which I did, making my version
coincide as nearly as possible with what had been already related; but
giving all the merit of the science which I had displayed to the tuition
of the chief physician. Mirza Ahmak, elated by my praise, was full of
zeal to serve me, and he then introduced me to the chief executioner as
a man fit and willing to undertake the office of the deceased nasakchi.

'How!' said the head of the nasakchies, 'a doctor become an executioner!
how can that be?'

'There is no harm in that,' said the poet (looking at the doctor through
the corner of his eye)--'they are both in the same line--the one does
his business with more certainty than the other, that's true; but after
all, it signifies little whether a man dies gradually by a pill, or at
once by a stroke of the scimitar.'

'As for that,' retorted Mirza Ahmak, 'to judge of others by you,
poets are in the same line too; for they murder men's reputations; and
everybody will agree with me, that that is a worse sort of killing than
the doctor's (as you were pleased to say), or the nasakchi's.'

'That's all very well,' exclaimed the chief executioner; 'you may kill
in any manner you choose, provided you leave me the soldier's manner.
Give me good hard fighting--let me have my thrust with the lance, and my
cut with the sabre, and I want nothing more