Dedication
TO
MY WIFE
MY COMPANION
ON MANY A GYPSY-JAUNT
“They cast the glamour o’er him.”
“You must forgive us. We are barbarians.... We are ruffians of the sun... and we must be forgiven everything.”
“It is easy to forgive in the sun,” Domini said.
“Madame, it is impossible to be anything but lenient in the sun. That is my experience.... But, as I was saying, the sun teaches one a lesson of charity. When I first came to live in Africa in the midst of the sand-rascals—eh, Madame, I suppose as a priest I ought to have been shocked by their goings-on. And, indeed I tried to be, I conscientiously did my best, but it was no good. I couldn’t be shocked. The sunshine drove it all out of me. I could only say, ‘It is not for me to question le bon Dieu, and le bon Dieu has created these people and set them here in the sand to behave as they do. What is my business? I can’t convert them. I can’t change their morals—I must just be a friend to them, cheer them up in their sorrows, give them a bit if they’re starving, doctor them a little—I’m a first-rate hand at making an Arab take a pill or a powder—when they are ill, and I make them at home with the white marabout.’ That’s what the sun has taught me, and every sand-rascal and sand-rascal’s child in Amara is a friend of mine.”
“You are fond of the Arabs, then?” she said.
“Of course I am, Madame. I can speak their language, and I’m as much at home in their tents, and more, than I ever should be at the Vatican—with all respect to the Holy Father.”
(Conversation between Domini and Father Beret in The Garden of Allah, quoted here by the kind permission of Mr. Robert Hichens.)