“With this holy man I remained for some four or five days, passing my time at leisure in his retreat among the mountains, and feeding my donkey upon the dried grasses which I brought in by armfuls at dusk from the woodlands. Upon the fifth day of this concealment the hermit came in pensive and sad, and said to me:
“ ‘My son, with every day the wickedness of this world increases, and the judgment of God will surely fall upon it in a devastating fire! I have but just heard that the chief magistrate of our capital city, using as a dupe an innocent stranger, sold to one of the great jewellers of the place for no less than 10,000 dinars a quantity of pearls, every one of which now turns out to be false and valueless! Nay, I am told that the largest are made of nothing but wax! And, what is worse, not content with this first wickedness, the magistrate under the plea that the young stranger had disappeared confiscated the gems again and had the poor merchant most severely beaten! But—worse and worse! the poor youth having innocently returned that very night to the city, was seized by the guard and beheaded. Ya, ya,’ said the good old man, throwing up his hands, ‘the days increase, and their evil increases with them!’ ”
At this moment the hoarse and discordant voice of the public crier croaked its first note from the neighbouring turret, and the nephews, who had sat enraptured at their uncle’s tale, knew that it was time to disperse. The eldest brother therefore said:
“O uncle; before we go let me express the thanks of all of us for your enrapturing story. But let me also express our bewilderment at the absence of all plan in your singular adventures. For though we have listened minutely to all you have said, we cannot discover what art you showed in the achievement of any purpose. For instance, how could you know that the pearls were false?”
“I did not know it, my dear nephew,” replied the great merchant with beautiful simplicity, “and the whole was the Mercy of Allah! … But come, the hour of prayer is announced, and we must, following the invariable custom of the faithful, make yet another joint in my singular tale. Come, therefore, on this day week, shortly after the last of the public executions of the vulgar, and I will tell you of my further fortunes: for you must understand that the 12,000 dinars of which my story now leaves me possessed are”—and here the honest old man yawned again and waved his hand—“but a flea-bite to a man like me.”
His seven little nephews bowed repeatedly, and, walking backwards without a trip, disappeared through the costly tapestries of their uncle’s apartments.
III
Al-Tawajin, or “The Pipkins”
On the appointed day of the next week, when, with the hour of public executions, the noonday amusements of the city come to an end, and the citizens betake themselves to the early afternoon’s repose, the seven boys were once more seated in the presence of their uncle, whom they discovered in a radiant humour.
He welcomed them so warmly that they imagined for a moment he might be upon the point of offering them sherbet, sweetmeats, or even money; they were undeceived, however, when the excellent but extremely wealthy old man, drawing his purse lovingly through his fingers, ordered to have poured out for each of them by a slave a further draught of delicious cold water, put himself at his ease for a long story, and resumed his tale:
“You will remember, my delightful nephews,” he said, “how I found myself in the hermit’s hut without a friend in the world, and with a capital of no more than twelve thousand dinars which I had carried thither in a sack upon donkey-back. Indeed, it was entirely due to the Mercy of Allah that my small capital was even as large as it was: for had the merchant in the bazaar discovered the pearls to be false he would not only have offered me far less but might possibly, after having disposed of the pearls, have given me over to the police. As it was, Heaven had been kind to me, though not bountiful, and I still had to bethink me what to do next if I desired to increase my little treasure.
“Taking leave, therefore, of the good hermit, I pressed into his hand a small brass coin the superscription of which was unknown to me and which I therefore feared I might have some difficulty in passing. I assured my kind host that it was a coin of the second Caliph Omar and of value very far superior to any modern gold piece of a similar size. As the hermit, like many other saintly men, was ignorant of letters, his gratitude knew no bounds. He dismissed me with a blessing so long and complicated that I cannot but ascribe to it some part of the good fortune which next befell me.
“For you must know that when, after laying in stores at a neighbouring village, I had driven my donkey forward for nearly a week over barren and uninhabited mountains, and when I had nearly exhausted my provision of dried cakes and wine (a beverage which our religion allows us to consume when no one is by), I was delighted to come upon a fertile valley entirely closed in by high, precipitous cliffs save at one issue, where a rough track led from this enchanted region to the outer world. In this valley I discovered, to my astonishment, manners to be so primitive or intelligence so low that the whole art of money-dealing was ignored by the inhabitants and by the very governors themselves.
“The king (who, I am glad to say,
