At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and awful.Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the patio, he said, "There is another thing that is true.
It is true that on the other side of that wall there is a prison," and, lifting his voice to a shriek, he added, "you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel.One step more--"But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling throat.If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have had his will of him.But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his passion, and a retort upon his words.
And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha's story of his ingratitude he could tell a different tale.This pitiful slave of rage and fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin, shrieking, bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was the master in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood.But for the strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head wherewith he had guarded him, where would the man be now? In the dungeons of Abd er-Rahman, having gone thither by way of the Sultan's wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture.
By the mind's eye Israel could see him there at that instant--sightless, eyeless, hungry, gaunt.But no, he was still here--fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious.And good men lay perishing in his prisons, and children, starved to death, lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten back by his cubs.