Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/262

230 amassed treasures beyond the competence of all the kings of the regions of the earth, deeming that delight would still endure to me; but there fell on me unawares the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Companies, he who desolates the abodes of men and lays waste the inhabited places, the slayer of great and small, babes and children and mothers, he who hath no compassion on the poor man, by reason of his poverty, neither feareth he kings, because of their commandment and forbiddance. Yea, we abode in security in this palace, till there descended upon us the judgment of the Lord of the Worlds, the Lord of the heavens and the earths; the vengeance of the Manifest Truth overtook us and there died of us every day two, till a great company of us had perished. When I saw that destruction had entered our dwellings and taken up its abode with us and drowned us in the sea of deaths, I summoned a writer and bade him write these verses and admonitions, the which I let grave, with rule and compass, on these doors and tablets and tombs. Now I had an army of a thousand thousand horsemen, hardy, strong-armed warriors, armed with spears and coats of mail and sharp swords; so I bade them don their long hauberks and gird on their keen swords and mount their high-mettled chargers and couch their dreadful spears; and whenas there fell on us the doom of the Lord of heaven and earth, I said to them, “Ho, all ye soldiers and troopers, can ye avail to ward off that which is fallen on me from the Omnipotent King?” But they availed not unto this and said, “How shall we war with Him to whom no chamberlain bars access, the Lord of the gate that hath no doorkeeper?” Then quoth I to them, “Bring me my treasures.” Now I had in my treasuries a thousand cisterns, in each of which were a thousand quintals of red gold and the like of white silver, besides pearls and jewels of all