livered this speech, we kissed each other's head and face, and took
our leaves:--What profits it to kiss our mistress's cheek, and with the
same breath to bid her adieu. Thou mightest say that the apple had taken
leave of its friends by having this cheek red and that cheek
yellow:--_Were I not to die of grief on that day I say farewell, thou
wouldst charge me with being insincere in my attachments_."

XVII

A ragged dervish accompanied us along with the caravan for Hijaz, and a
certain Arab prince presented him with a hundred dinars for the support
of his family. Suddenly a gang of Khafachah robbers attacked the
caravan, and completely stripped it. The merchants set up a weeping and
wailing, and made much useless lamentation and complaint:--"Whether thou
supplicatest them, or whether thou complainest, the robbers will not
return thee their plunder":--all but that ragged wretch, who stood
collected within himself, and unmoved by this adventure. I said:
"Perhaps they did not plunder you of that money?" He replied: "Yes, they
took it; but I was not so fond of my pet as to break my heart at parting
with it. We should not fix our heart so on any thing or being as to find
any difficulty in removing it."

I said: "What you have remarked corresponds precisely with what once
befell myself; for in my juvenile days I took a liking to a young man,
and so sincere was my attachment that the Cabah, or fane, of my eye was
his perfect beauty, and the profit of this life's traffic his
much-coveted society:--Perhaps the angels might in paradise, otherwise
no living form can on this earth display such a loveliness of person. By
friendship I swear that after his demise all loving intercourse is
forbidden; for no human emanation can stand a comparison with him.

"All at once the foot of his existence stumbled at the grave of
annihilation; and the sigh of separation burst from the dwelling of his
family. For many days I sat a fixture at his tomb, and, of the many
dirges I composed upon his demise, this is one:--'On that day, when thy
foot was pierced with the thorn of death, would to God the hand of fate
had cloven my head with the sword of destruction, that my eyes might not
this day have witnessed the world without thee. Such am I, seated at the
head of thy dust, as the ashes are seated on my own:--whoever could not
take his rest and sleep till they first had spread a bed of roses and
narcissuses for him: the whirlwind of the sky has s