Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 2.djvu/36

 18 A If Laylah wa Lay la k. were better for you not to interfere." Accordingly they held aloof and, when Nur al-Din had made an end of thrashing the Wazir, he took his handmaid and fared homewards. Al-Mu'in also went his ways at once, with his raiment dyed of three colours, black with mud, red with blood and ash coloured with brick-clay. When he saw himself in this state, he bound a bit of matting 1 round his neck and, taking in hand two bundles of coarse Halfah-grass, 2 went up to the palace and standing under the Sultan's windows cried aloud, " O King of the age, I am a wronged man ! I am foully wronged ! " So they brought him before the King who looked at him ; and behold, it was the chief Minister ; whereupon he said, " O Wazir who did this deed by thee ? " Al-Mu'in wept and sobbed and repeated these lines : Shall the World oppress rne when thou art in't ? o In the lion's presence shall wolves devour ? Shall the dry all drink of thy tanks and I o Under rain-cloud thirst for the cooling shower ? " O my lord," cried he, " the like will befal every one who loveth and serveth thee well." " Be quick with thee," quoth the Sultan, " and tell me how this came to pass and who did this deed by one whose honour is part of my honour." Quoth the Wazir, " Know, O my lord, " that I went out this day to the slave-market to buy me a cookmaid, when I saw there a damsel, never in my life long saw I a fairer ; and I designed to buy her for our lord the Sultan ; so I asked the broker of her and of her owner, and he answered, " She belongeth to Ali son of Al-Fazl bin Khakan. Some time ago our lord the Sultan gave his father ten thousand dinars wherewith to buy him a handsome slave-girl, and he bought this maiden who pleased him ; so he grudged her to our lord the Sultan and gave her to his own son. When the father died, the son sold all he had of houses and gardens and household gear, and squandered the price till he was penniless. Then he brought the girl to the market, that he might sell her, and he handed her over to the broker to cry and the merchants bid higher and higher on her, until her price Arab. " Barsh," a bit of round matting used by the poor as a seat. The Wazik thus showed that he had been degraded to the condition of a mat-maker. The growth (a Pea of two species) which named Wady Haifa (vulg. "Halfah"), of which the home public has of late heard perhaps a trifle too much. Burckhardt (Prov. 226) renders it "dry reeds "incorrectly enough.