During this conversation between Haroun and Abraha, Giafer and Sidi ibn Thalabi had fallen a little way behind and were walking and talking together. A little way behind these came the two slaves whom Mesrúr had brought to the slave merchants with him to carry the gold pieces.
When the party arrived at the bank of the Tigris, Haroun, stepping aside, beckoned the slaves to him and despatched them to the palace with a note addressed to the Grand Chamberlain.
In this note he informed that functionary that he should not return to the palace for some hours, and commanded him to send the two slaves at once, under guard and without allowing them to speak to any one, to a town fifty days' journey from Bagdad, he having no mind to entrust the secret of his last night's adventure to the indiscreet tongues of the slaves who had participated in it. Having thus got rid of the slaves, Haroun and Giafer accompanied their new acquaintances, Abraha and Sidi ibn Thalabi, on board the ship or pleasure barge belonging to the latter.
After they had been seated for some time, and had appeased their hunger by partaking of a very substantial breakfast, Haroun said to Sidi ibn Thalabi—
"I must now remind you of your promise to tell me something of your recent experience."
Upon which Sidi ibn Thalabi spoke as follows:
THE NARRATIVE OF SIDI IBN THALABI.
"I must first tell you, friend Hamad," he began, for Haroun and Giafer were known to him only by their assumed names of Hamad and Yussuf—"I must first tell you how it came about that I was induced to personate our sovereign lord, Haroun Alraschid, whom may Allah preserve, and from whose ears may the story of my presumption be hidden for ever."
"I should say," said Haroun, "that he is never likely to hear of it, unless you communicate it to him yourself."
"In that case I should be safe enough," said Sidi ibn Thalabi. "However, to resume, what put the idea into my head in the first instance was this. I was one day coming down to the river to spend the day on board my boat, when I called at the shop or stall of a fruit merchant in the bazaar to buy some fruit. I sat down in his shop while I selected what I required and bargained as to the price. I was surprised, in the first place, to find that instead of asking five or six times the value of the fruit and abating his demand by degrees, as is commonly the custom, the merchant, who treated me with extreme deference, begged me to choose whatever fruit I pleased and pay him for it as much as I might consider it to be worth."