"and I will bring them all
before you."

So saying, he went away, but was no sooner at home and in the solitude
of his own house than be tore his beard, beat his breast, and, humbling
his head to the ground, cried out,

"Son of a burned father was I, not to be content with poverty and a poor
existence! Why did I ever pretend to gifts that I had not, or dare
to tell men that I possessed powers that were not mine? See to what
vainglory and boastfulness have brought me. In forty days I am to die an
ignominious death!"

Thus grieving and self-accusing, the weary hours passed over, and the
night closed in only to find him in all the anguish of his sorrow; nor
was it the least poignant of his sufferings, as he bethought him that
already one of his forty days was drawing to its close, for in his heart
he had destined this period to enjoyment and self-indulgence.

Now, though aspiring to the fame of a magician, so little learning did
he possess, that it was only by recourse to a contrivance he was able to
reckon the days as they passed, and calculate how much of life remained
to him. The expedient he hit upon was to throw each night into an
olive-jar a single date, by counting which at any time he could know how
many days had elapsed.

While his own conscience smote him bitterly for the foolish deception
he had practised, there were, as it happened, others who had consciences
too, and somewhat more heavily charged than his own. These were the
thieves who had stolen the treasure, and who firmly believed in the
magician's powers. Now, it so chanced that on the very instant he was
about to throw his first date into the jar, one of the robbers had crept
noiselessly to the window, and, peering through the half-closed shutter,
watched what was doing within. Dimly lighted by a single lamp, the
chamber was half shrouded in a mysterious gloom; still, the figure of
a man could be descried, as, with gestures of sorrow and suffering, he
approached a great jar in the middle of the room and bent over it. It
was doubtless an incantation, and the robber gazed with all eagerness;
but what was his terror as he beheld the man drop something into the
jar, exclaiming, as he did so, in a loud voice, "Let Allah be merciful
to us! there is one of them!" With the speed of a guilty heart he
hurried back to his confederates, saying, "I had but placed my eye to
the chink, when he knew that I was there, and cried, 'Ha! there is one
of them!'"

It