Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/59

43 THE HEDGEHOG AND THE PIGEONS.

A hedgehog once took up his abode under a palm-tree, on which roosted a pair of wood-pigeons, that had made their nest there and lived an easy life, and he said to himself, ‘These pigeons eat of the fruit of the palm-tree, and I have no means of getting at it; but needs must I go about with them.’ So he dug a hole at the foot of the palm-tree and took up his lodging there, he and his wife. Moreover, he made a place of prayer beside the hole, in which he shut himself and made a show of piety and abstinence and renunciation of the world. The male pigeon saw him praying and worshipping and inclined to him for his much devoutness and said to him, ‘How long hast thou been thus?’ ‘Thirty years,’ replied the hedgehog. ‘What is thy food?’ asked the bird and the other answered, ‘What falls from the palm-tree.’ ‘And what is thy clothing?’ asked the pigeon. ‘Prickles,’ replied the hedgehog; ‘I profit by their roughness.’ ‘And why,’ continued the bird, ‘hast thou chosen this place rather than another?’ ‘I chose it,’ answered the hedgehog, ‘that I might guide the erring into the right way and teach the ignorant.’ ‘I had thought thee other-guise than this,’ rejoined the pigeon; ‘but now I feel a yearning for that which is with thee.’ Quoth the hedgehog, ‘I fear lest thy deed belie thy speech and thou be even as the husbandman, who neglected to sow in season, saying, “I fear lest the days bring me not to my desire, and I shall only waste my substance by making haste to sow.” When the time of harvest came and he saw the folk gathering in their crops, he repented him of what he had lost by his tardiness and died of chagrin and vexation.’ ‘What then shall I do,’ asked the pigeon, ‘that I may be freed from the bonds of the world and give myself up altogether to the service of my Lord?’ ‘Betake thee to preparing for the next world,’ answered