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and when Noureddin had made an end of beating the Vizier, he took his slave-girl and went home; and Muïn rose, with his white clothes dyed of three colours with black mud, red blood and ashes. When he saw himself in this plight, he put a halter round his neck and taking a bundle of coarse grass in either hand, went up to the palace and standing under the King’s windows, cried out, ‘O King of the age, I am a man aggrieved!’ So they brought him before the Sultan, who looked at him and knowing him for his chief Vizier, asked who had entreated him thus. Whereupon he wept and sobbed and repeated the following verses:
Shall fortune oppress me, and that in thy day, O King? Shall wolves devour me, whilst thou art a lion proud?
Shall all that are thirsty drink of thy water-tanks And shall I thirst in thy courts, whilst thou art a rain-fraught cloud?
‘O my lord,’ continued he, ‘thus fare all who love and serve thee.’ ‘Make haste,’ said the Sultan, ‘and tell me how this happened and who hath dealt thus with thee, whose honour is a part of my own honour.’ ‘Know then, O my lord,’ replied the Vizier, ‘that I went out this day to the slave-market to buy me a cook-maid, when I saw in the bazaar a damsel, whose like for beauty I never beheld. She pleased me and I thought to buy her for our lord the Sultan; so I asked the broker of her and her owner, and he replied, “She belongs to Noureddin Ali son of Fezl ben Khacan.” Now our lord the Sultan aforetime gave his father ten thousand dinars to buy him a handsome slave-girl, and he bought therewith this damsel, who pleased him, so that he grudged her to our lord the Sultan and gave her to his own son. When Fezl died, his son sold all that he possessed of houses and gardens and household stuff and squandered the price, till he became penniless. Then he brought the girl down to the market, to sell her, and handed her to the broker, who cried her and the
