Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/71

53 hand and that the time of my translation from this temporary abiding-place [of the world] to that which is eternal draws nigh. Now thou art with child and wilt haply bear a son after my death. If this be so, name him Hasib Kerimeddin and rear him well. When the boy grows up and says to thee, “What inheritance did my father leave me?” give him these five leaves, which when he has read and digested, he will be the most learned man of his time.’ Then he bade her farewell and heaving one sigh, departed the world and all that is therein, the mercy of the Most High God be upon him! His family and friends wept over him and washed him and bore him forth in great state and buried him.

After awhile, his widow bore a handsome boy and named him Hasib Kerimeddin, as her husband had charged her; then she summoned the astrologers, who took the altitude of the planets and drawing the boy’s horoscope, said to her, ‘Know that this boy will live many years; but a great peril will befall him in the early part of his life, from which if he escape, he will be given the knowledge of wisdom.’ She suckled him two years, then weaned him, and when he was five years old, she sent him to school, but he would learn nothing. So she took him from school and set him to learn a trade; but he would not learn and there came no work from his hands. She wept over this and the folk said to her, ‘Marry him: peradventure he will take thought for his wife and learn a trade.’ So she sought out a girl and married him to her; but marriage wrought no change in him and he still remained idle as before.

One day, some neighbours of hers, who were woodcutters, came to her and said, ‘Buy thy son an ass and cords and a hatchet, and let him go with us to the mountain and cut wood. The price of the wood shall be his and ours, and with his share he shall provide thee and his wife.’ When she heard this, she rejoiced greatly and bought Hasib