Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 4.djvu/264

234  of his mind, he dissembled his vexation and let no change appear in his demeanour.

When the carousel was at an end, El Amin commanded one of his servants to fill the boat, in which Jaafer had come, with dirhems and dinars and all manner jewels and jacinths and rich clothes and other treasures of price. So he laid therein a thousand myriads of money and a thousand fine pearls, each worth twenty thousand dirhems; nor did he give over loading the barge with all manner of precious things, till the boatmen cried out for quarter, saying, ‘The boat cannot hold any more;’ whereupon he bade them carry all this to Jaafer’s palace. Such are the fashions of the magnanimous, may God have mercy on them! THE SONS OF YEHYA BEN KHALID AND SAÏD BEN SALIM EL BAHILI.

(Quoth Saïd ben Salim el Bahili ), I was once, in the days of Haroun er Reshid, in very narrow case and greatly oppressed with debts, that had accumulated upon me and that I had no means of discharging. My doors were blocked up with creditors and I was without cease importuned for payment by claimants, who dunned me in crowds, till I was at my wits’ end what to do. At last, being sore perplexed and troubled, I betook myself to Abdallah ben Malik el Khuzaï and besought him to aid me with his judgment and of his good counsel direct me to the door of relief; and he said, “None can quit thee of this thy strait but the Barmecides.” Quoth I, “Who can brook their pride and put up with their arrogance?” And he answered, “Thou must put up with it, for the sake of amending thy case.” So I left him and went straight to