But Suleymân was searching in his memory for some event more clearly illustrating the grave risks of chance suggestion. At length he gave a sigh of satisfaction, and then spoke as follows:
'There was once a Turkish pasha of the greatest, a benevolent old man, whom I have often seen. He had a long white beard, of which he was extremely proud, until one day a man, who was a wag, came up to him and said:
'"Excellency, we have been wondering: When you go to bed, do you put your beard inside the coverings or out?"
'The Pasha thought a moment, but he could not tell, for it had never come into his head to notice such a matter. He promised to inform his questioner upon the morrow. But when he went to bed that night he tried the beard beneath the bedclothes and above without success. Neither way could he get comfort, nor could he, for the life of him, remember how the beard was wont to go. He got no sleep on that night or the next night either, for thinking on the problem thus presented to his mind. On the third day, in a rage, he called a barber and had the beard cut off. Accustomed as he was to such a mass of hair upon his neck, for lack of it he caught a cold and died.
'That story fits the case before us to a nicety,' said Suleymân in conclusion, with an air of triumph.
'What is the moral of it, deign to tell us, master!' the cry arose from all sides in the growing twilight.
'I suppose,' I hazarded, 'that, having had attention called to the peculiar clothing of my legs, I shall eventually have them amputated or wear Turkish trousers?'
'I say not what will happen; God alone knows that. But the mere chance that such catastrophes, as I have shown, may happen is enough to make wise people shun that kind of speech.'
I cannot to this day distinguish how much of his long harangue was jest and how much earnest. But the fellâhîn devoured it as pure wisdom.