‘Poor Abu Nowas is dead!’ said Subida when he entered the room.
‘It is not Abu Nowas, but his wife who is dead,’ answered the Sultan.
‘No; really you are quite wrong. She came to tell me herself only a couple of hours ago,’ replied Subida, ‘and as he had spent all their money, I gave her something to bury him with.’
‘You must be dreaming,’ exclaimed the Sultan. ‘Soon after midday Abu Nowas came into the hall, his eyes streaming with tears, and when I asked him the reason he answered that his wife was dead, and they had sold everything they had, and he had nothing left, not so much as would buy her a shroud, far less for her burial.’
For a long time they talked, and neither would listen to the other, till the Sultan sent for the door-keeper and bade him go instantly to the house of Abu Nowas and see if it was the man or his wife who was dead. But Abu Nowas happened to be sitting with his wife behind the latticed window, which looked on the street, and he saw the man coming, and sprang up at once. ‘There is the Sultan’s door-keeper! They have sent him here to find out the truth. Quick! throw yourself on the bed and pretend that you are dead.’ And in a moment the wife was stretched out stiffly, with a linen sheet spread across her, like a corpse.
She was only just in time, for the sheet was hardly drawn across her when the door opened and the porter came in. ‘Has anything happened?’ asked he.
‘My poor wife is dead,’ replied Abu Nowas. ‘Look! she is laid out here.’ And the porter approached the bed, which was in a corner of the room, and saw the stiff form lying underneath.
‘We must all die,’ said he, and went back to the Sultan.
‘Well, have you found out which of them is dead?’ asked the Sultan.
