thy foul dealing and its due retaliation." Then he laughed with chops wide open and repeated these two couplets,
"No longer beguile me, * Thou'lt fail of thy will! What can't be thou seekest; * Thou hast sown so reap Ill!"
Quoth the wolf, "O gentlest of ravenous beasts, I fain hold thee too faithful to leave me in this pit." Then he wept and complained and, with tears streaming from his eyes, recited these two couplets,
"O thou whose favours have been out of compt, * Whose gifts are more than may be numbered! Never mischance befel me yet from time * But that I found thy hand right fain to aid."
"O thou ninny foe," quoth the fox, "how art thou reduced to humiliation and prostration and abjection and submission, after insolence and pride and tyranny and arrogance! Verily, I kept company with thee only for fear of thy fury and I cajoled thee without one hope of fair treatment from thee: but now trembling is come upon thee and vengeance hath overtaken thee." And he repeated these two couplets,
"O thou who seekest innocence to 'guile, * Thou'rt caught in trap of thine intentions vile: Now drain the draught of shamefullest mischance, * And be with other wolves cut off, thou scroyle!"
Replied the wolf, "O thou clement one, speak not with the tongue of enemies nor look with their eyes; but fulfil the covenant of fellowship with me, ere the time of applying remedy cease to be. Rise and make ready to get me a rope and tie one end of it to a tree; then let the other down to me, that I may lay hold of it, so haply I shall from this my strait win free, and I will give thee all my hand possesseth of wealth and fee." Quoth the fox, "Thou persistest in conversation concerning what will not procure thy liberation. Hope not for this, for thou shalt never, never get of me wherewithal to set thee at liberty; but call to mind thy past misdeeds and the craft and perfidy thou didst imagine against me and bethink thee how near thou art to being stoned to death. For know that thy soul is about the world to quit and cease in it and depart from it; so shalt thou to destruction hie and ill is the abiding-place thou shalt aby!" [1] Rejoined the wolf, "O Father of the
- ↑ A Koranic phrase often occurring.
