Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 4.djvu/306

276 “Turn thou leader of the camels, let me bid my love farewell!” For her absence and estrangement, life and hope in me expire. Still I kept my troth and failed not from her love; ah, would I knew What she did with that our troth-plight, if she kept her faith entire!

Then he looked at me and said, “Dost thou know what she did?” “Yes,” answered I, “she is dead; may God the Most High have mercy on her!” At this his face changed and he sprang to his feet and cried out, “How knowest thou she is dead?” “Were she alive,” answered I, “she had not left thee thus.” “By Allah, thou art right,” said he, “and I care not to live after her.” Then his nerves quivered and he fell on his face; and we ran up to him and shook him and found him dead, the mercy of God be on him! At this we marvelled and mourned sore for him and laid him out and buried him. When I returned to Baghdad and went in to the Khalif El Mutawekkil, he saw the trace of tears on my face and said to me, “What is this?” So I told him what had passed, and it was grievous to him and he said, “What moved thee to deal thus with him? By Allah, if I thought thou didst this with intent, I would punish thee therefor!” And he mourned for him the rest of the day. THE APPLES OF PARADISE.

(Quoth Abou Bekr Mohammed ibn el Ambari ), I once left Ambar, on a journey to Ammouriyeh, in the land of the Greeks, and alighted midway at the monastery of El Anwar, in a village near Ammouriyeh, where there came out to me the prior of the monastery and superior of the monks, Abdulmesih by name, and brought me into the monastery. There I found forty monks, who