Provost scoffing

• prophet’s coffin → Mohammed’s coffin is said to be eversuspended → it sways back and forth, eastwards and westwards → Otherways and wesways

• provost: a religious leader; chief dignitary of a cathedral or a collegiate church

• Abbé Prévost: 18th Century author of Manon Lescaut, which was made into an opera by Puccini in 1893, and Le doyen de Killérine

• scoffing: mockery; jeering, deriding

• coughing