The man had hardly observed that Jussuf shrank before him, when he seized the wings of his head-dress with both his hard hands, and gave a leap, as if he were trying to fly.
Jussuf was too frightened to ask him who he was, and what he wanted. But the man immediately uttered a guttural, grumbling sound, which was probably intended for a song; and Jussuf heard these words:
"I come, a slave at one's behest,
Who knoweth more than thou canst tell;
She warned thee, whiles of friends the best,
Of bees that lurk in honied bell.
Guide well thy course; nor seek, proud man,
Whate'er thou deem'st a better way;
She can each hidden secret scan—
So follow thou without delay."
When his song was nearly ended, another voice hummed on the side where the melon lay. On looking there, Jussuf saw a second human form, as wonderful as the first, rise out of the aperture. This one had a dark dress, inclining to olive-green, and his form was rather less slim than that of the former; but he had the appearance of a bee in human form. Leaping also nearer to Jussuf, it sang in a higher but equally buzzing tone:
"Mark me well: oh, what can be
Direful wasps but plagues to thee?
Thine is every vain desire;
Yet the bees that never tire,
They can serve and tend thee well—
The busy storers of the cell.
Keep me, then; thy path shall prove
A path of hope that leads to love."
But the first one grumbled again, so that Jussuf could not understand any more.
However terrified Jussuf might have been at this appearance, he yet collected himself, and said, "Her dear servants seem to mean very well, but——"
Before he had finished his speech, both of them were grumbling and buzzing at him.
He understood still so much, that each of them wished to lessen the reputation of his fellow, and to make him suspected in his eyes. Both turned against each other again, and hummed and buzzed at one another with unheard-of obstinacy. Their struggle became constantly more vehement, and at last they seized each other in mad rage, and whirled round, struggling and burring in a circle. Jussuf saw a kind of lance and a long dagger shine, and both of them fell down pierced through at his feet. In their dying moments they begged him to bury them in their cradle. He nodded assuringly, and they lay dead in the moment. Immediately Jussuf called his slaves to him, who were standing in the distance in earnest expectation, and ordered them to carry the dead bodies to the melon. But they refused, certainly with humble excuses, but still with steadfast decision.
"In the name of all natural things," said they, "we will prove to thee our certain obedience; but do not ask us to make ourselves unclean, or to meddle with such unnatural appearances."