James Justinian Morier

“ I accordingly prepared to bleed ‎my patient; but when she saw the penknife, the cap underneath to receive her blood, ‎and the anxious faces of those about her, she became frightened, and refused to ‎permit me to proceed. Fearing after all that I should lose my prize, I put on a very ‎sagacious look, felt her pulse, and said that her refusal was unavailing, for that it was ‎her fate to be bled, and that she and every one knew nothing could avert an event ‎which had been decreed since the beginning of the world. ”

“ Whilst making my ‎preparations for bleeding the Banou, I cast my eyes about the tent, in the hopes of ‎seeing the prize, which I was anxious to possess. It struck me that I might make the ‎very operation in which I was engaged subservient to my views, and demanding to ‎feel the patient's pulse once more, which I did with a look of intense meditation, I ‎observed that this was a complicated disorder—that the blood must not be allowed ‎to flow upon the ground, but be collected in a vessel, that I might examine it at ‎leisure. ”

“ I must confess that when I became possessed of the fifty ducats, a recollection of my ‎poor former master, who was leading a melancholy life in the mountains with the ‎camels, whilst I was living in comparative luxury, came across my mind, and I half ‎resolved to restore them to him; but by little and little I began to argue differently ‎with myself. 'Had it not been for my ingenuity,' said I, 'the money was lost for ever; ‎who therefore has a better claim to it than myself? ”