bbi for me,--neither of us could forego his
hobby,--and Im-Hanna, affectionate, devoted as our mothers,--these
were the joys of our Saturday nights in our underground diggings. We
were absolutely happy. And we never tried to measure our happiness in
those days, or gauge it, or flay it to see if it be dead or alive,
false or real. Ah, the blessedness of that supreme unconsciousness
which wrapped us as a mother would her babe, warming and caressing our
hearts. We did not know then that happiness was a thing to be sought.
We only knew that peddling is a pleasure, that a bank account is a
supreme joy, that a dish of _mojadderah_ cooked by Im-Hanna is a royal
delight, that our dour dark cellar is a palace of its kind, and that
happiness, like a bride, issues from all these, and, touching the
strings of Khalid's lute, mantles us with song."

CHAPTER V

THE CELLAR OF THE SOUL

Heretofore, Khalid and Shakib have been inseparable as the Pointers.
They always appeared together, went the rounds of their peddling orbit
together, and together were subject to the same conditions and
restraints. Which restraints are a sort of sacrifice they make on the
altar of friendship. One, for instance, would never permit himself an
advantage which the other could not enjoy, or a pleasure in which the
other could not share. They even slept under the same blanket, we
learn, ate from the same plate, puffed at the same narghilah, which
Shakib brought with him from Baalbek, and collaborated in writing to
one lady-love! A condition of unexampled friendship this, of complete
oneness. They had both cut themselves garments from the same cloth, as
the Arabic saying goes. And on Sunday afternoon, in garments spick and
span, they would take the air in Battery Park, where the one would
invoke the Statue of Liberty for a thought, or the gilded domes of
Broadway for a metaphor, while the other would be scouring the horizon
for the Nothingness, which is called, in the recondite cant of the
sophisticated, a vague something.

In the Khedivial Library MS. we find nothing which this Battery Park
might have inspired. And yet, we can not believe that Khalid here was
only attracted by that vague something which, in his spiritual
enceinteship, he seemed to relish. Nothing? Not even the does and
kangaroos that adorn the Park distracted or detained him? We doubt it;
and Khalid's lute sustains us in our doubt. Ay, and so does our
Scribe; for in his _Histoire