Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/166



'When they made their camels yellow white kneel down at dawning grey * They mounted her on crupper and the camel went his way, Mine eye balls through the prison wall beheld them, and I cried * With streaming eyelids and a heart that burnt in dire dismay O camel driver turn thy beast that I farewell my love! *         In parting and farewelling her I see my doomed day I'm faithful to my vows of love which I have never broke, * Would Heaven I kenned what they have done with vows that vowed they!'

Then he looked at me and said, 'Say me, dost thou know what they did?' [FN#202] Answered I, 'Yes, they are dead; Almighty Allah have mercy on them!' At this his face changed and he sprang to his feet and cried out, 'How knowest thou they be dead?;' and I replied, 'Were they alive they had not left thee thus.' Quoth he, 'By Allah, thou art right, and I care not to live after them.' Then his side muscles quivered and he fell on his face; and we ran up to him and shook him and found him dead, the mercy of the Almighty be on him! At this we marvelled and mourned for him and, sore mourning, laid him out and buried him.--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

When it was the Four Hundred and Twelfth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that al-Mubarrad thus continued: "When the man fell we mourned over him with sore mourning and laid him out and buried him. And when I returned to Baghdad and went in to the Caliph al-Mutawakkil, he saw the trace of tears on my face and said to me, 'What is this?' So I told him what had passed and it was grievous to him and he cried, 'What moved thee to deal thus with him? [FN#203] By Allah, if I thought thou didst not repent it and regret him I would punish thee therefor!' And he mourned for him the rest of the day." And amongst the tales they tell is one of