text: )" Our friend the khan however must have been always rather out of his element at a feast; unlike his countryman Abu-Talib--who speedily became reconciled to the forbidden viands and wines of the Franks and even carried his laxity so far as to express a _hope_ rather than a _belief_ that the brushes which he used were made of horsehair and not of the bristles of the unclean beast--Kerim Khan appears (as we have seen on a previous occasion) never to have relaxed the austerity of the religious scruples which the _Indian_ Moslems have borrowed from the Hindus so far as to partake of food not prepared by his own people; and on the present occasion in spite of the instances of his hosts his simple repast consisted wholly of fruit