B997 <=> B999 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 998]

“’I then began to deliberate with myself as follows:

“’I do not dress any more cleanly than everybody else living here in Europe; I wash my hands and face every morning also like everybody else; once a week I make a point of going to a Turkish bath, also, it seems, like everyone; and in this way I turned over many things in my mind, and with the result I found nothing in which, in this respect, I was exceptional; and yet the fact remained that, from my loathsome life, I of course ran more chances of being infected.

“’From then on my thoughts were guided by two definite convictions already fully established in me: in the first place, that anyone having relations with such women must inevitably sooner or later be infected; and secondly, that only cleanliness protects one from such infection.

“’In this manner I continued to reflect for a whole week, until I suddenly remembered a certain habit of mine which here in Europe I always scrupulously concealed from my acquaintances; I remembered, namely, about that habit of mine which is called among us in Persia, abdest.

“’The custom of abdest which, according to the notions here might be called ablution, is one of the chief customs among us in Persia.

“’Strictly speaking, every follower of the Mohammedan religion must obey this custom, though it is practiced particularly strictly only by Mohammedans of the Shiite sect; and as almost the whole of Persia is composed of Shiites, the custom is nowhere so widely spread as among us in Persia.