"The Báb was heart-broken," His amanuensis, Siyyid
Husayn-i-'Aziz, subsequently related, "at the receipt of this unexpected
intelligence. He was crushed with grief, a grief that stilled His voice and
silenced His pen. For nine days He refused to meet any of His friends. I myself,
though His close and constant attendant, was refused admittance. Whatever meat
or drink we offered Him, He was disinclined to touch. Tears rained continually
from His eyes, and expressions of anguish dropped unceasingly from His lips. I
could hear Him, from behind the curtain, give vent to His feelings of sadness
as He communed, in the privacy of His cell, with His Beloved. I attempted to
jot down the effusions of His sorrow as they poured forth from His wounded
heart. Suspecting that I was attempting to preserve the lamentations He
uttered, He bade me destroy whatever I had recorded. Nothing remains of the
moans and cries with which that heavy-laden heart sought to relieve itself of
the pangs that had seized it. For a period of five months He languished,
immersed in an ocean of despondency and sorrow."
- Nabil (‘The
Dawn-Breakers’, translated and edited by Shoghi Effendi)
