e, and persuading him, in his turn, that he was the
cream of lieutenants, and the very best of materials for the future
executioner in chief, he relaxed in his dislike, and even flattered me
so much as to say, that, by the blessing of Allah, the benign and
the merciful, he believed that I should not fail to become in time an
ornament to the profession.

I still kept my lodging at the doctor's house until the period of the
Shah's departure, and filled up my time in preparing for the journey.
The very circumstance of being a nasakchi gave me consequence in the
bazaar, and I found no difficulty in procuring everything I wanted upon
credit. During my stay with the doctor, I had managed to set myself
up with a small capital of necessaries, which I had procured either
in presents from patients, or by happy contrivances of my own. As for
instance, I wanted a bed, a quilt, and a pillow: a poor man happening
to die under our charge, I assured his relations, whom I knew to be the
most bigoted of Mussulmans, that his death could be no fault of ours,
for no one could doubt the skill with which he had been treated, but
that the bed upon which he lay must be unfortunate; for in the first
place, the quilt was of silk;[66] and in the next, the foot of the bed
had not been turned towards the Kebleh,[67] as it ought to have been:
this was enough for the family to discard the bed, and it became mine.

A looking-glass was necessary to my toilet: a mirza, sick of the
jaundice, looked at himself in one which he possessed, and was
horror-struck at his colour. I assured him that it only proceeded from
a defect in the glass, for that in fact he was as fresh as a rose. He
threw it away, and I took it home with me.

No one was stricter than Mirza Ahmak himself in all the exteriors of
religion, and scrupulous to a fault about things forbidden as unclean. I
was in want of a pair of _yakhdans_, or trunks, and a pair belonging
to the doctor, which were lying idle in an unfrequented room, were
frequently the objects of my contemplation. How shall I manage to become
master of these? thought I: had I but half the invention of Dervish
Sefer, I should already have been packing up my things in them. A
thought struck me: one of the many curs, which range wild throughout
Tehran, had just pupped under a ruined archway, close to our house.
Unseen, I contrived to lodge the whole litter within one of the trunks,
and to make a deposit of old bones in the other.