Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/283

249 that of the money-changers, whom they saw sitting dead upon silken carpets, in shops full of gold and silver. Thence they passed to the drug-market, where they saw the shops filled with drugs of all kinds and bladders of musk and ambergris and aloes and camphor and other perfumes in vessels of ivory and ebony and khelenj-wood and Spanish brass, the which is equal in value to gold, and various kinds of Indian cane; but the shopkeepers were all dead, nor was there with them aught of food.

Hard by this last market they came upon a palace, magnificently built and decorated; so they entered and found therein banners displayed and drawn swords and bended bows and bucklers hanging by chains of gold and silver and helmets gilded with red gold. In the vestibules stood benches of ivory, plated with glittering gold and covered with silken stuffs, whereon lay men, whose skin had dried up on their bones; the unknowing had deemed them sleeping, but, for lack of food, they had perished and tasted the cup of death.

When the Amir Mousa saw this, he stood still, glorifying God the Most High and hallowing Him and contemplating the beauty of the palace and the fair perfection of its ordinance, for it was builded after the goodliest and stablest fashion and the most part of its adornment was of green lapis-lazuli; and on the inner door, which stood open, were written, in characters of gold and ultramarine, the following verses:

Consider what thou seëst here, O mortal, and beware And to thine end take thought before thou hence away must fare. Needs must each dweller in a house depart therefrom; so look Provision of good works, which thee shall profit, thou prepare. See here a folk, who did adorn their dwellings and are now Become the pledges of the dust for that they wrought whilere. They builded, but their buildings served them nought; they hoarded wealth, That might not save them, when their days of life accomplished were.