Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/24

6 my Lord and restore to their rightful owners the treasures that are in my storehouses, so I may not be burdened with the woe of a reckoning nor suffer the misery of punishment therefor.’ ‘Away! away!’ replied the Angel. ‘This may nowise be. How can I grant thee a respite, whenas the days of thy life are counted and thy breaths numbered and thy moments fixed and written?’ ‘Grant me an hour,’ said the King; but the Angel answered, saying, ‘The hour was in the account and hath passed, and thou unheeding, and hath expired, and thou taking no thought: and now thy moments are accomplished, and there remains to thee but one breath.’ ‘Who will be with me, when I am transported to my grave?’ asked the King. Quoth the Angel, ‘Nought will be with thee but thy work.’ ‘I have no work,’ said the King; and the Angel, ‘Doubtless, thine abiding place will be in the fire and thy departure to the wrath of the Almighty.’ Then he took the soul of the King, and he fell off his throne and dropped on the earth [dead]. And there arose a mighty weeping and wailing and clamour of lamentation for him among the people of his court, and had they known that to which he went of the wrath of his Lord, their weeping for him had been [yet] sorer and their lamentation louder and more abounding. ISKENDER DHOULKERNEIN AND A CERTAIN TRIBE OF POOR FOLK.

It is related that Iskender Dhoulkernein came once, in his travels, upon a tribe of poor folk, who owned nought of the goods of the world and who dug their graves over against the doors of their houses and were wont at all