am I to act?' he said in an undertone, as though arguing with himself. 'If you become too wise, maybe you will not care to live; if you become richer than any one, every one will envy you; I had better pick and eat the third, the withered apple!'
And so he did; and the old man laughed a toothless laugh, and said: 'О wise young man! You have chosen the better part! What need have you of the white apple? You are wiser than Solomon as it is. And you've no need of the red apple either. . . . You will be rich without it. Only your wealth no one will envy.'
'Tell me, old man,' said Jafifar, rousing himself, 'where lives the honoured mother of our Caliph, protected of heaven?'
The old man bowed down to the earth, and pointed out to the young man the way.
Who in Bagdad knows not the Sun of the Universe, the great, the renowned Jaffar?
Арril 1878.
TWO STANZAS
There was once a town, the inhabitants of which were so passionately fond of poetry, that if some weeks passed by without the appearance
264
