An enemy of Abosaber had heard this discourse, and reported it to the King.
"Thus," said he, "speaks the man whom the goodness of your Majesty had spared!"
The monarch instantly gave orders that Abosaber, his wife, and his two children, should be driven from the village and banished from his dominions.
The wife of the wise and resigned Mussulman made loud complaints: she reproached the authors of her calamity, and carried her resentment to excess.
"Have patience, wife," said he to her: "this virtue is the sovereign balm against adversity; it gives salutary counsel, and carries with it hope and consolation. Let us go to the desert, since they persecute us here."
The good Abosaber lifted up his eyes and blessed the Almighty as he pursued his journey with his family. But they had scarcely entered the desert when they were attacked by a band of robbers. They were plundered, their children were carried off, and, deprived of every resource or human aid, they were left to the care of Providence.
The wife, having lost by this new stroke of fate what was most dear to her, gave free course to her grief, and set up mournful cries.
"Indolent man!" said she to her husband, "lay aside your listlessness. Let us pursue the robbers: if they have any feeling of humanity left, they will restore us our children."
"Let us have patience," replied Abosaber; "it is the only remedy for evils which appear desperate. These robbers are well mounted; naked and fatigued as we are, there is no probability of our overtaking them. And suppose we should succeed in that, perhaps these barbarous men, harassed with our lamentations, might put us to death."
The wife grew calm, for the decay of her strength made her unable to complain; and they both arrived on the bank of a river, from whence they discovered a village.