Page:The Shaving of Shagpat (1856).djvu/323

Rh was left not even in possession of the palace in which I abode. What a day was that!"

Cried Shibli Bagarag, "O Feshnavat, 'twas not a day veiled from me, and I saw it, thee, and him."

So Feshnavat said, "How? From what point of view, O Master of the Event?"

He answered, "From Aklis, through the eye of Aklis."

So Feshnavat said, "Wondrous must be that eye!"

He replied, "All things be wondrous in Aklis." Then said he, turning quickly, "Yonder is the light from Aklis striking on the city, and I mark Shagpat, even he, illumined by it, singled out, where he sitteth on the roof of the palace by the market-place."

So they looked, and it was as he had spoken, that Shagpat was singled out in the midst of the city by the wondrous beams of the eye of Aklis, and made prominent in effulgence.

Said Abarak, climbing to the level of observation, "He hath a redness like the inside of a halved pomegranate."

Feshnavat stroked his meditative chin, exclaiming, "He may be likened to a mountain goat in the midst of a forest roaring with conflagration."

Said Shibli Bagarag, "Now is he the red-maned lion, the bristling boar, the uncombed buffalo, the plumaged cock, but soon will he be like nothing else save the wrinkled kernel of a shaggy fruit, diminished, weazen, bitter. Lo, now, the Sword! mark ye? it leapeth to be at him, and 'twill be as the keen icicle