Pagina 847 de 1116

The Caliph laughed at my story and said, "Give him a gift and let

him go;" but I said, "By Allah! I will take naught till I have

made known to the Commander of the Faithful what came to pass

with the rest of my brothers; for truly I am a man of few words

and spare of speech." Then the Caliph gave ear to

The Barber's Tale of his Fourth Brother.

Now as for my fourth brother, O Commander of the Faithful, Al-Kuz

al-aswani, or the long necked Gugglet hight, from his brimming

over with words, the same who was blind of one eye, he became a

butcher in Baghdad and he sold flesh and fattened rams; and great

men and rich bought their meat of him, so that he amassed much

wealth and got him cattle and houses. He fared thus a long while,

till one day, as he was sitting in his shop, there came up an old

man and long o' the beard, who laid down some silver and said,

"Give me meat for this." He gave him his money s worth of flesh

and the oldster went his ways. My brother examined the Shaykh's

silver, and, seeing that the dirhams were white and bright, he

set them in a place apart. The greybeard continued to return to

the shop regularly for five months, and my brother ceased not to

lay up all the coin he received from him in its own box.