Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/291

269 tailors and silk-weavers and carpenters and other craftsmen. As soon as the sun had risen, they set food before us that we might eat, when behold, the master of the house entered, and with him a comely young man, a stranger from Baghdad, dressed in the finest of clothes and perfectly handsome, except that he was lame. He saluted us, while we rose to receive him; and he was about to sit down, when he espied amongst us a certain barber; whereupon he refused to sit and would have gone away. But we stopped him and the host seized him and adjured him, saying, “What is the reason of thy coming in and going out again at once?” “By Allah, O my lord,” answered he, “do not hinder me, for the cause of my turning back is yonder barber of ill-omen sitting there.” When the host heard this, he wondered and said, “How comes this young man, who is from Baghdad, to be troubled in his mind about this barber?” Then we looked at the young man and said to him, “Tell us the reason of thine anger against the barber.” “O company,” replied he, “there befell me a strange adventure with this barber in my native city of Baghdad; he was the cause of the breaking of my leg and of my lameness, and I have sworn that I will never sit in the same place with him nor tarry in any city of which he is an inhabitant. I left Baghdad, to be rid of him, and took up my abode in this city and lo, I find him with you! But now not another night shall pass, before I depart hence.” So we begged him to sit down and tell us what had passed between him and the barber in Baghdad, whereat the latter changed colour and hung down his head. Then said the young man, “Know, O company, that my father was one of the chief merchants of Baghdad, and God had vouchsafed him no child but myself. When I grew up to man’s estate, my father was translated to the mercy of God, leaving me great wealth in money and slaves and