He says to her, “It is all the same to me. Let him eat me; I am so wretched that I fear nothing.”
And he tells her how he had a beautiful house which had not its equal in all the world, and with it all sorts of riches, and that, “Having abandoned my wife, I am seeking it, and I am come to consult your son, being sent by the sun.”
She hides him under the staircase. The south wind arrives as if he meant to tear the house up, and very thirsty. Before beginning to drink he smells the smell of the race of Christians, and said to his mother:
“Out with what you have hidden,” and that he must begin by eating him.
His mother said to him, “Eat and drink what is before you.”
And she tells him the misfortunes of this man, and how that the sun has spared his life that he might come and consult him.
Then he makes the man come out, and the man tells him how that he is going about trying to find a house, and that if anybody ought to know it is he, and that they had robbed him of his house, which had laths of gold, tiles of diamonds, and all the rest of gold and silver, and if he has not seen it anywhere?
He tells him, “Yes, yes, and all to-day I have been passing over it, and have not been able to take away one of its tiles.”
“Oh! if you will tell me where it is!”
He says that it is on the other side of the Red Sea, very, very far away.