“I let them convey by chance phrases the direction we had to travel and the distance of our goal. I was delighted to discover that our way did not lie through the city, and that we might hope to reach the Holy One before night.
“The journey was tedious, passing over burnt land with but a few wretched villages upon the track; but by the late afternoon we could see far off, coloured by the declining rays of the sun, a small, white-domed building, the tomb of a great saint long dead, by the side of which a large group of tents and a considerable assembly lying out in the open round them cooking their evening meal, beasts of burden, and all the movement of a camp, showed us that we were reaching the term of our day’s journey.
“When we reached the camp I joined the thickest part of the throng, separating from the group with which I had been marching. I made my evening prayers in as conspicuous a place as possible, prolonged them prodigiously, the better to impress my new neighbours, and then lay down, uncertain what the course of the next day should be.
“In that dream there appeared a bright and beneficent Being who with one hand was relieving of his superfluous wealth an unconscious pilgrim to his left, and with the other was conferring precisely the same favour on another to his right. Each of the two pilgrims had his face turned away from the Blessed Genius thus engaged and seemed unconscious of the process to which he was subjected. The Glorious Visitant, without interrupting its occupation or ceasing with mechanical regularity to dip its hands into the pouches of its unwitting neighbours, looked upon me with the most benign expression, winked, and disappeared.
“I awoke. It was yet dark. I pondered until dawn what the revelation might mean. With the rising of the sun inner as well as outer light was bestowed upon me. I interpreted in the following fashion the vision that had thus been vouchsafed to me and the event proved me to have divined the right reading by interpretation:
“In every place largely frequented by pilgrims you will, my dear nephews (if your commercial pursuits lead you to such spots in after life), discover two kinds of men. There are those who have already spent their all under the influence of the Spirit and are about to depart. These, being in a necessity to raise a viaticum for their return, will eagerly convert into cash at a vile price such wretched objects as remain to them. On the other hand, those arriving are flush of money and eager to acquire holy relics and memorials of the blessed days before them.