your treatment of me, and know that my story is wonderful. They said, What thenis thy story? So he related it to them, in the hope that they would liberate him: but they believed not what he said; and, instead of shewing him any regard, they beat him, and tore his clothes; whereupon, his body becoming exposed to their view, they discovered upon his sides the marks of beating with mikra'ahs, and exclaimed, O wretch! these scars bear testimony to thy guilt. They then conducted him before the Wali, while he said within himself, I am undone for my transgressions, and none can deliver me but God, whose name be exalted! And when he was brought before the Wali, the magistrate said to him, O thou scoundrel! nothing but a heinous crime hath occasioned thy having been beaten with mikra'ahs:and he caused a hundred lashes to be inflicted upon him; after which, they mounted him upon a camel, and proclaimed before him, This is the recompense of him who breaketh into men's houses!But I had already heard of his misfortunes, and gone forth, and found him; and I accompanied him about the city while they were making this proclamation, until they left him; when I took him, and brought him back secretly into Baghdad, and apportioned him a daily allowance of food and drink.
THE BARBER'S FIFTH BROTHER
My fifth brother (El-Feshshar ["Alnaschar"]) was cropped of his ears, O Prince of the Faithful. He was a pauper, who begged alms by night, and subsisted upon what he thus acquired by day: and our father was a very old man, and he fell sick and died, leaving to us seven hundred pieces of silver, of which each of us took his portion; namely, a hundred pieces. Now my fifth brother, when he had received his share, was perplexed, not knowing what to do with it; but while he was in this state, it occurred to his mind to buy with it all kinds of articles of glass, and to sell them and make profit: so he bought glass with his hundred pieces of silver, and put it in a large tray, and sat upon an elevated place, to sell it, leaning his back against a wall. And as he sat, he meditated, and said within himself, Verily my whole stock consisteth of this glass: I will sell it for two hundred pieces of silver; and with the two hundred I will buy
