But then" he continued to mutter to himself, "the
combination intimates that this husband was to be Christian.
--Christian!" he repeated, after a pause. "That gave the insane
fanatic star-gazer hopes that I might renounce my faith! But me,
the faithful follower of our Prophet--me it should have
undeceived. Lie there, mysterious scroll," he added, thrusting
it under the pile of cushions; "strange are thy bodements and
fatal, since, even when true in themselves, they work upon those
who attempt to decipher their meaning all the effects of
falsehood.--How now! what means this intrusion?"
He spoke to the dwarf Nectabanus, who rushed into the tent
fearfully agitated, with each strange and disproportioned feature
wrenched by horror into still more extravagant ugliness--his
mouth open, his eyes staring, his hands, with their shrivelled
and deformed fingers, wildly expanded.
"What now?" said the Soldan sternly.
"ACCIPE HOC!" groaned out the dwarf.
"Ha! sayest thou?" answered Saladin.
"ACCIPE HOC!" replied the panicstruck creature, unconscious,
perhaps,that he repeated the same words as before.
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