'It is to be feared,' said the Sheikh of the beggars, 'that the man might chance to die of this sort of purification, though indeed it be very wholesome for him, and I am not altogether against it.'
'Let us make him our slave,' said a third who had himself been the slave of a poor man who had died without heirs. 'The fellow is strong. Let us buy millstones and make him grind barley for us in this cellar. In this way he will not eat our food for nothing.'
After this many others gave advice of the same kind. But while they were talking there was a great clattering and noise upon the stone steps which led down into the cellar, and a man fell over the last step and rolled over and over into the very midst of the council, railing and lamenting.
'It is that ass of Egypt,' said the Sheikh of the beggars. 'I know him by the clattering of the wooden hoofs he wears on his hands, and also by his braying. Let him also give his opinion when he is recovered from his fall.'
'It is strange and marvellous,' said one, 'that he who has no legs should suffer so many falls, being, by the will of Allah, always upon the earth. For when we first saw him we found him fainting upon the ground, having fallen from the wall of a garden, though no man could tell how he had climbed upon it.'
'I had been transported to the top of the wall as in a dream,' replied the cripple, 'for there were dates in that garden. But having eaten too greedily of them I fell asleep on the top and I dreamed that my body was torn by hyænas; and waking suddenly I fell down. For the dates were yet green.'
'This may or may not be true,' said the blind man. 'For you are an Egyptian. Let us, however, hear what you have to advise in the matter of Abdullah and his wife, whom we have taken prisoners.'
'I fear that you mock me, O my lord,' answered the man. 'But if I am mocked, I will advise that this Abdullah be also made a sport of, for us first, and for the people of Riad afterwards.'
'Tell us how this may be done, for a good jest is better than salt for roasting, and the sheep lie here bound before us.'
'Take this man, then,' said the cripple, 'and uncover his face, and hold him fast. Then let one of us get the razor and shave off all his beard and his eyebrows, and the hair of his head even to the nape of his neck. Then if he came suddenly before her who bore him and cried, "Mother," she would cover her face and answer, "Begone, thou ostrich's egg!" For she would not know him. And to-morrow we will take his excellent clothes from him and put them upon our Sheikh. But we will dress Abdullah in rags such as would not serve to wipe the mud from a slave's shoes in the time of the subsiding waters, and we will tie his hands under his arm-pits and put a halter over his head and lead him about the city. Then he will cry out against us to the people, saying that he is Abdullah, but we will also cry out in answer: "See this madman, who believes himself to be a sheikh of Bedouins though Allah has given him no beard! O people of Riad, you may know that the spring is come, by the braying of this ass."'