Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/174

152 And he answered, ‘Give me proof of your gods.’ So the king bade every one who had an idol bring it, and all the troops brought their idols to the divan.

Now I was sitting behind a curtain, whence I could look upon my father’s divan, and I had an idol of emerald, the bigness of a man. My father demanded it, so I sent it to the divan, where they set it up beside that of my father, which was of jacinth, whilst the vizier’s idol was of diamond. As for those of the grandees and notables, some were of ruby and some of cornelian, others of coral or Comorin aloes-wood and yet others of ebony or silver or gold; and each had his own idol, after the measure of that which he could afford; whilst the idols of the common soldiers and of the people were some of granite, some of wood, some of pottery and some of mud; and they were all of various colours, yellow and red and green and black and white. Then said the stranger to my father, ‘Pray your idol and these idols to be wroth with me.’

So they ranged the idols in a divan, setting my father’s idol on a chair of gold at the upper end, with mine by its side, and ranking the others each according to the condition of him who owned it and worshipped it. Then my father arose and prostrating himself to his own idol, said to it, ‘O my god, thou art the Bountiful Lord, nor is there among the idols a greater than thou. Thou knowest that this man cometh to me, attacking thy divinity and making mock of thee; yea, he avoucheth that he hath a god stronger than thou and biddeth us leave worshipping thee and worship his god. So be thou wroth with him, O my god!’ And he went on to supplicate the idol; but it returned him no answer neither bespoke him with aught; whereupon quoth he, ‘O my god, this is not of thy wont, for thou usest to answer me, when I speak to thee. How