Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 2.djvu/52

 32 Alf Laylak wa Laylah. Thou hast granted more favours than ever I craved; o Thou hast satisfied needs which my heart enslaved : I will thank thee and thank whileas life shall last, o And my bones will praise thee in grave engraved ! Hardly had the fisherman ended his verse, when the lice began to crawl over the Caliph's skin, and he fell to catching them on his neck with his right and left and throwing them from him, while he cried, " O fisherman, woe to thee ! what be this abundance of lice on thy gaberdine." " O my lord," replied he, " they may annoy thee just at first, but before a week is past thou wilt not feel them nor think of them." The Caliph laughed and said to him, " Out on thee ! Shall I leave this gaberdine of thine so long on my body ?" Quoth the fisherman, " I would say a word to thee but I am ashamed in presence of the Caliph ! " ; and quoth he, " Say what thou hast to say." " It passed through my thought, O Commander of the Faithful," said the fisherman, " that, since thou wishest to learn fishing so thou mayest have in hand an honest trade whereby to gain thy livelihood, this my gaberdine besitteth thee right well." 1 The Commander of the Faithful laughed at this speech, and the fisherman went his way. Then the Caliph took up the basket of fish and, strewing a little green grass over it, carried it to Ja'afar and stood before him. Ja'afar thinking him to be Karim the fisherman feared for him and said, " O Karim, what brought thee hither ? Flee for thy life, for the Caliph is in the garden to-night and, if he see thee, thy neck is gone." At this the Caliph laughed and Ja'afar recognized him and asked, "Can it be thou, our lord the Sultan ?" ; and he answered, "Yes, O Ja'afar, and thou art my Wazir and I and thou came hither together ; yet thou knowest me not ; so how should Shaykh Ibrahim know me, and he drunk ? Stay here, till I come back to thee." " To hear is to obey," said Ja'afar. Then the Caliph went up to the door of the pavilion and knocked a gentle knock, whereupon said Nur al-Din, " O Shaykh Ibrahim, some one taps at the door." " Who goes there ?" cried the Shaykh and the Caliph replied, " It is I, O Shaykh Ibrahim ! " Most characteristic is this familiarity between the greatest man then in the world and his pauper subject. The fisherman alludes to a practise of Al-Islam, instituted by Caliph Omar, that all rulers should work at some handicraft in order to spare the public treasure. Hence Sultan Mu'ayyad of Cairo was a calligrapher who sold his handwriting, and his example was followed by the Turkish Sultans Mahmud, Abd al-Majid and Abd &1- Aziz. German royalties prefer carpentering and Louis XVI. watch-making.