Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 2.djvu/71

 Tale of the Second Eunuch^ Kafur. 51 TALE OF THE SECOND EUNUCH, KAFUR. KNOW, O my brothers that, when beginning service as a boy of eight, I used to tell the slave-dealers regularly and exactly one lie every year, so that they fell out with one another, till at last my master lost patience with me and, carrying me down to the market, ordered the brokers to cry, " Who will buy this slave, knowing his blemish and making allowance for it ? " He did so and they asked him, " Pray, what may be his blemish ? " and he answered, " He telleth me one single lie every year." Now a man that was a merchant came up and said to the broker, " How much do they allow for him with his blemish?" "They allow six hundred dirhams," he replied ; and said the other, " Thou shalt have twenty dirhams for thyself." So he arranged between him and the slave-dealer who took the coin from him and the broker carried me to the merchant's house and departed, after receiving his brokerage. The trader clothed me with suitable dress, and I stayed in his service the rest of my twelvemonth, until the new year began happily. It was a blessed season, plenteous in the produce of the earth, and the merchants used to feast every day at the house of some one among them, till it was my master's turn to entertain them in a flower-garden without the city. So he and the other merchants went to the garden, taking with them all that they required of provaunt and else beside, and *at eating and carousing and drinking till mid-day, when my master, having need of some matter from his home, said to me, " O slave, mount the she-mule and hie thee to the house and bring from thy mistress such and such a thing and return quickly." I obeyed his bidding and started for the house but, as I drew near it, I began to cry out and shed tears, whereupon all the people of the quarter collected, ^reat and small ; and my master's wife and daughters, hearing the noise I was making, opened the door and asked me what was the matter. Said I, " My master was sitting with his friends beneath an old wall, and it fell on one and all of them ; and when I saw what had happened to them, I mounted the mule and came hither in haste to tell you." When my master's daughters and wife heard this, they screamed and rent their raiment and beat their faces, whilst the neighbours came around them. Then the wife over- turned Jlie furniture of the house, one thing upon another, and tore