“Praise be to Allah, who has placed such fools in the world! I asked for bread, and he gave me meat as well. And when I had finished eating he gave me money for my journey. A madman—may Allah reward him!”
The sun through the leafage cast a chequer-work of golden light and blue shadow upon the ground. The speaker came towards them, walking slowly between the gnarled trunks, with eyes upturned. It was a hale old man of sixty years or more, tall and upright. His body was clad in a loose robe, whose colour had once been blue, reaching to a little below the knee. His bare feet and shins were grey with dust. Upon his head was a battered and tasselless fez, with a dirty rag wound round it by way of turban. Happening to let his eyes fall a minute from their heavenly contemplation, he became aware of the presence of fellow-creatures and his whole demeanour changed in a second. His form seemed to shrivel and grow less. His head sank down upon his breast, his eyes writhed upward so that only the whites of them were visible, and his whole body was distorted to a semblance of the last agony.
Stretching forth a trembling hand he besought the pity of his hearers for a poor old wretch who found himself alone and without money in a strange land.
“Allah will give to you!” he whined. “For the love of Allah, help me or I die! … O Lord! … Allah will give to you! … By the Quran, I am at the gate of death! … Allah will give to you! … My sons were killed by the Bedawin; my daughters were ravished before my eyes! … Allah is bountiful! … O Lord! … I myself have a hand that is withered! … O Lord! … My house was destroyed by an earthquake; a thief came in the night and stole my mare from me! … Allah will give to you! … My children were slain before my eyes! … O Lord! …”
It is likely that he would have gone on whining in this strain for an hour or more had not Saïd broken in—
“Allah will give to thee! I am poor even as thou art. I, too, have been robbed and my house brought to ruin. I, too, was once a rich man, having flocks and herds, houses and vineyards, ay, and the half of a city belonging to me. And now there is no difference between me and thee. Allah will give to thee; I have nothing.”
In a twinkling the old beggar resumed his natural shape. His head rose, his body straightened, the pupils of his eyes came again into sight.
“Is it true?” he said in a friendly tone, squatting down in the shade beside the fisherman. “Then I tell thee thou art happy. All to gain; nothing to lose. There is no trade like ours. All the day long we cringe, we flatter, we weep, and none can resist us. And afterwards, when the evening is come, we laugh and are merry, with eating and drinking, with music and women. Behold, I love thee, for thy likeness to my son, Mansûr, who forsook me. I feel as a father toward thee. Is it a long time that ruin is upon thee?”
“But a few hours, O my uncle,” replied Saïd, bitterly.
The old rascal threw up his hands and cast his sly eyes skyward.
“Ah, it is sad at the first, and thou art downhearted—it is natural. But after a few days—a week—a month, thou wilt not envy the greatest in the land.”
Saïd was not pleased to have his misfortunes thus lightly treated as part of the common lot of mankind. He made haste to explain.
“With another man it would have been a small thing. He would have lost a camel, or perhaps a house. But as for me, I was a great man—the greatest in all the city. Men ran to kiss my robe as I walked abroad. I had camels and horses, asses and mules, more than a man can count in an hour. It is no common loss that makes me sad.”
“I suffer with thee,” said the beggar, with a reminiscent shake of his head. “I also was lord of great wealth. In those days men knew me by the name of Mustafa Bek. Now I am only Mustafa, the old beggar. Allah is greatest!”
But Saïd was not to be outdone.
“But yesterday men kissed the ground between my feet,” he said, with a shake of the head the counterpart of the other’s. “I was called the Emìr Saïd, and none dared come near me save with forehead to the earth. Allah is greatest!”
“I had twenty men whose only pleasure was to do my bidding,” said the beggar in his turn, “and the beauty of my three wives made the fair ones of Paradise jealous.”
“All the men of the city were as slaves before me,” said Saïd; “and if I had a desire towards any girl, I had but to command her father and she was given to me.”
“And how wast thou deprived of all this?” asked his rival, curiously. “Such things do not fade away like stars at the sun’s rising. By Allah, they do not go out like a lamp for a puff of wind.”
“My city was by the seashore,” faltered Saïd, after a moment’s hesitation. “Last evening, at the hour of sunset, the waters rose and swallowed up all that was mine. I and this woman alone remain alive of all that were in the city.”
The beggar rose to his feet with a laugh.
“Thou hast yet much to learn, O Emìr,” he said scornfully, yet with a certain indulgence. “The sea rises not once in a hundred years, and then all the world knows of it. Yesterday, at the hour of sunset, I stood by the shore and beheld the sea calm
