A figure shuffled past him with pain, and Omar recognised him to be the beggar to whom he that very day had given the remainder of his money. Omar called out to him, and besought him in a pitiful strain to share with him the benefaction which he himself had bestowed, but the cripple went heedlessly gasping on his way; so that Omar did not know whether he had heard him, or was only dissembling, that he might seem to have a right to disregard him.
"Am I not more wretched than this outcast?" said Omar, lamenting amid the stillness of night. "Who will take pity on me, now that all is taken from me that could comfort me?"
He fetched a deep sigh, his arms pained him, a burning fire raged in his bones, and every breath was drawn in torture. Now he took a review of his fortune, and, for the first time, thought once more on his brother.
"Oh, where art thou, noble-minded one?" cried he; "perhaps the sword of the angel of death has already smitten thee; misery perhaps has consumed thee in the most wearing poverty, and thou hast cursed thy poor brother in the last hour of anguish. Ah! I have deserved this at thy hands; now do I suffer the penalty of my ingratitude, my hard-heartedness! Heaven is just!—And I too could stalk along so proudly, and call on God to witness my virtue! O Heaven, forgive the sinner who, without a murmur, bows to thy chastisement."
Omar buried himself in pensive thoughts; he remembered with what brotherly love Mahmoud had received him when, for the first time, he was destitute; he reproached himself for having neglected to save him, and for not having repaid by that means his debt of gratitude: he longed for death, as the term of his penalty and his sufferings.
The moon shone brightly over the landscape, and a small caravan, consisting of a few camels, wound slowly through the vale. The lust of life again awoke in Omar; he cried out for aid to the passers-by, in a voice of wailing. They laid him carefully on a camel, that they might have his wounds bound up in the next town, which they reached by break of day. The merchant attended the unfortunate man himself, and Omar recognised in him—his brother. His sense of shame knew no bounds, as neither did the compassion of Mahmoud. The one brother begged for pardon, and the other had already forgiven; tears flowed down the cheeks of each, and the most touching reconciliation was solemnised between them.
Mahmoud had repaired to Ispahan after his impoverishment, and had there made the acquaintance of a rich old merchant, who soon grew fond of him, and assisted him with money. Fortune was favourable to the exile, and in a short period he recovered his lost wealth. At this moment his old benefactor died, making him his heir.
On his recovery, Omar travelled with his brother to Ispahan, where the latter set him up anew in business. Omar married, and never forgot how much he owed to his brother; and from that time forward both lived in the strictest concord, and afforded the whole town a pattern of brotherly love.
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