Page:Man in the Panther's Skin.djvu/216

 afflicted me, I could not dry the spring of tears flowing forth from mine eyes.

1193. "House and child became hateful to me, I sat with cheerless heart; waking I thought of her, when I fell asleep (I thought of her) in my drowsiness. The oathbreaker Usen seems to me of the infidels in faith; the accursed one cannot approach me, to be near me with his cursed face.

1194. "One day at eventide, just at sunset, I passed the guards, the door of the asylum caught mine eye; I was in a reverie, sadness at the thought of her was slaying me; I said: 'Cursed is the vow of every man!'

1195. "From somewhere there came a wandering slave with three companions, the slave clad as a slave, the others in coarse travelling garb; they brought food and drink which they had bought in the city for a drama. They drank, they ate, they chattered, thus they sat merry.

1196. "I hearkened to them, I watched them. They said: 'Pleasantly we rejoiced, but (though) here we are joined as comrades, (yet) are we strangers, none of us knows who another is or whence we are come; we must at least tell one another our stories with our tongues.'

1197. "Those others told their tales as is the wont of wayfarers. The slave said: 'O brothers, providence is a celestial thing; I harvest for you pearls, you sowed but millet; my story is better than your stories:

1198. I am the slave of the exalted king, the ruler of the Kadjis. It chanced that he was struck by a sickness which prevailed over him; the helper of the widow, the comforter of the orphan, was dead to us; now his sister, better than a parent, rears his children.