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I will preserve with care my money from all those By nature base and true to none. ’Tis better so
Than that I e’er should say unto the mean of soul, “Lend me so much: I’ll pay to-morrow five-fold mo,”
And see my friend avert his face and turn away, Leaving my soul cast down, as ’twere a dog’s, I trow!
O what a sorry lot is his, who hath no pelf, E’en though his virtues bright like to the sun should show!
‘O my lord,’ continued the steward, ‘this lavish expense and prodigal giving waste away wealth.’ When Noureddin heard his steward’s words, he looked at him and said, ‘I will not hearken to one word of all thou hast said, for I have heard the following saying of the poet:
If I be blessed with wealth and be not liberal with it, May my hand wither and my foot eke paralysed remain!
Show me the niggard who hath won glory by avarice! Show me the liberal man his own munificence hath slain!
And he said, ‘Know, O steward, it is my desire that so long as there remains in thy hands enough for my morning meal, thou trouble me not with taking care for my evening meal.’ Therewith the steward went away and Noureddin continued his extravagant way of living; and if any of his boon-companions chanced to say to him, ‘This thing is handsome,’ he would answer, ‘It is thine as a gift;’ or if another said, ‘O my lord, such and such a house is handsome,’ he would say, ‘Take it: it is thine.’ In this manner he continued to live for a whole year, giving his friends a banquet in the morning and another in the evening, till one day as they were sitting together, the damsel Enis el Jelis repeated the following verses:
Thou madest fair thy thought of Fate, when that the days were fair, And fearedst not the unknown ills that they to thee might bring:
The nights were fair and calm to thee; thou wert deceived by them, For in the peace of night is born full many a troublous thing.
Just as she had finished, there came a knocking at the door; so Noureddin rose to open it, and one of his
