CHAPTER VIII
ENTITLED AL-BUSTÁN, OR THE ORCHARD
When Mahmoud’s nephews reappeared before him at the hour of public executions it was in a certain weariness of spirit; for though they knew that the fortunes of their uncle must subsequently be recovered in the narrative (since there he was before them, rolling, or, as the phrase went in Bagdad, “dripping” with it) yet the blows of fate had fallen upon him with such violence in the recent tale that something of his then despair had entered their own souls. They sat down therefore with hanging heads to listen, as they feared, to little better than the further advance of intolerable things.
The old man began in a subdued voice of lamentable recollection:
“I wandered on through the bare uplands, miserable, weak, penniless and in rags. So far had my soul fallen that on the seventh day I came near to omitting my prayer at even ... but I thank Heaven that this temptation was conquered! I knelt down painfully upon the little carpet which was my last possession and submitted myself to the will of Allah.
“As though in answer to my prayer, and while I still knelt there, I saw afar off the figure of one who moved, as I could see from that distance, with a carriage of leisure, and I hoped—I dared to hope—that in answer to my prayer, I will not say a victim, but, at any rate, some provender was to be afforded me.
“I hastened my steps to catch up the stranger, and as I approached him remarked with pleasure his fine clothes and stately manner. ‘I have here,’ said I to myself, ‘some Important Man, some one doubtless unused to the base necessities of commerce; simple, noble in mind, straightforward, generous, amply provided: the very companion whom I should desire.’ I turned over in my mind (as I slackened my steps for a moment, so that he should not yet observe my arrival) various schemes whereby I might excuse my intrusion upon his solitary walk. At last I hit on that which seemed to me the most agreeable to his supposed circumstances and to my appearance. I strode up to him and bowing low asked him whether his Greatness could direct a poor wretch to a certain village the name of which I had heard and which lay more or less in the direction I had taken.
“The stranger turned to salute me and with that I felt an added delight. For he was the very thing I had prayed. Young, simple in manner, courteous, probably, by his dress, independent and wealthy; probably, as our language has it, ‘his own father.’
“He wore rare ornaments; his cloak was of the finest wool and the cord that bound his headdress was interspersed with silver.
“By way of reply to my request, he told me in a pleasant, deep voice, speaking after the fashion of the rich, that he was himself strolling towards it so far as his own house and farm, which lay between, and that there he would put me upon my way. I expressed my gratitude, and my fear lest so bedraggled a companion might be distasteful to him. He smiled and assured me that he loved nothing better than converse. He had visited a neighbour that morning to ask advice on a certain set of pear trees of his which had not been doing well. He had left his servant to follow him with his mount, preferring this hour’s stroll back homewards in the cool of the sunset hour which had now descended.
“As we went we talked of many things and I frankly told him the story of my life; for I have discovered that nothing is more pleasing to men of his station than the account of how another has been reduced from wealth to poverty.