Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/344

328 he sent to fetch the dyer, bidding bring him barefoot and bareheaded, with his hands bound behind him. Now he was sitting in his house, rejoicing in Abousir’s [supposed] death, when, before he could be ware, the king’s guards rushed in upon him and cuffed him on the nape of the neck; after which they bound him and carried him into the royal presence, where he saw Abousir seated by the king’s side and the porter and workmen of the dyery standing before him. Quoth the porter to him, ‘Is not this thy comrade whom thou robbedst of his money and leftest with me sick in the khan?’ And the workmen said to him, ‘Is not this he whom thou badest us seize and beat?’

Therewith Aboukir’s baseness was made manifest to the king and he was certified that he merited a punishment yet sorer than that which Munker and Nekir deal [to the wicked after death]. So he upbraided him and said to his guards, ‘Take him and parade him about the city and the markets; then lay him in a sack and cast him into the sea.’ Whereupon quoth Abousir, ‘O king of the age, accept my intercession for him; for I pardon him all he hath done with me.’ ‘If thou pardon him his offences against thee,’ answered the king, ‘I cannot pardon him his offences against me.’ And he cried out, saying, ‘Take him.’ So they took him and paraded him about the city, after which they laid him in a sack with quicklime and cast him into the sea, and he died, drowned and burnt.

Then said the king to the barber, ‘O Abousir, ask of