Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/251

229 all up.’ Now the neighbour in question was controller of the Sultan’s kitchen and was wont to bring home great store of fat and broken meats; but the cats and mice used to eat it, or, if the dogs scented a fat sheep’s tail, they would come down from the roofs and tear at it; and in this way he lost much of what he brought home. So the Jew and his wife carried the hunchback up to the roof, and letting him down, through the windshaft, into the controller’s house, stood him up against the wall and went away. Hardly had they done so, when the controller, who had been spending the evening with some of his friends, hearing a recitation of the Koran, came home and going up with a lighted candle, found a man standing in the corner, under the ventilator. When he saw this, he said, ‘By Allah, this is a fine thing! He who steals my goods is none other than a man.’ Then he turned to the hunchback and said to him, ‘So it is thou that stealest the meat and fat. I thought it was the cats and dogs, and I kill the cats and dogs of the quarter and sin against them. And all the while it is thou comest down through the windshaft! But I will take my wreak of thee with my own hand.’ So he took a great cudgel and smote him on the breast, and he fell down. Then he examined him and finding that he was dead, cried out in horror, thinking that he had killed him, and said, ‘There is no power and no virtue but in God the Supreme, the Omnipotent!’ And he feared for himself and said, ‘May God curse the fat and the sheep’s tails, that have caused this man’s death to be at my hand!’ Then he looked at the dead man and seeing him to be humpbacked, said, ‘Did it not suffice thee to be a hunchback, but thou must turn thief and steal meat and fat? O Protector, extend to me Thy gracious protection!’ Then he took him up on his shoulders and going forth with him, carried him to the beginning of the market, where he set him on his feet against the wall of a