"
Thus ran the message of the "Takimi Vekai."
Halil Patrona had read these lines over and over again until he knew
every letter of them by heart. They were continually in his thoughts, in
his dreams, and the eternally recurring tumult of these anxious bodings
allowed his soul no rest. What if it were possible to falsify this
prophecy! What if his strong hand could but stay the flying wheel of
Fate in mid career, hold it fast, and turn it in a different direction!
so that what was written in the Book of Thora before Sun and Moon were
ever yet created might be expunged therefrom, and the guardian angels be
compelled to write other things in place thereof!
But such an idea ill befits a Mussulman; it is not the mental expression
of that pious resignation with which the Mohammedan fortifies himself
against the future, submissive as he is to the decrees of Fate, with
never a thought of striving against the Powers of Omnipotence with a
mortal hand. Ambitious, world-disturbing were the thoughts which ran
riot in the brain of Halil Patrona--thoughts meet for no mere mortal.
Poor indeed are the thoughts of man. He piles world upon world, and sets
about building for the ages, and then a light breath of air strikes upon
that which he has built and it becomes dust. Wherefore, then, does man
take thought for the morrow?
The night slowly descended, the glow of the southern sky grew ever paler
on the half-moons of the minarets, till they grew gradually quite dark
and the cry of the muezzin resounded from the towers of the mosques.
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