grass; the poor starved at his door, and he bared his dagger only to further the rule of iniquity and of oppression; he was indeed like the snake which stings his mother and kills her even as she bears him. He, too, was a Hadji; but the circumambulation of the shrines had done him little good and he returned from Mecca as bad and cruel and greedy and faithless as on the day when he had donned the pilgrim's garb. Allah had sealed his heart, and whenever he was seen holding converse with another man, the little children would gather around him and say: "Who is the man whom you are duping to-day, O Nassim, son of Taib?"
But you know the heart of woman; and you know that in a mother's eye every scorpion is a fleet gazelle.
Thus you will not wonder when I tell you that the mother of the two brothers loved Nassim with a far greater love than the noble Khassoum. Her first-born was indeed the apple of her eye, and on him she lavished all her caresses; and when Taib, the father of her children, the rich seller of perfumes, lay on his death-bed, her woman's wit spoke to the great love which she bore her elder son.
