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THE LOSS OF FRIENDS
49

MERCHANT STRONG-TOOTH

There is a city called Growing City on the earth's surface. In it lived a merchant named Strong-Tooth who directed the whole administration. So long as he handled city business and royal business, all the inhabitants were satisfied. Why spin it out? Nobody ever saw or heard of his like for cleverness. For there is much wisdom in the proverb:

Suppose he minds the king's affairs,
The common people hate him;
And if he plays the democrat,
The prince will execrate him:
So, since the struggling interests
Are wholly contradictory,
A manager is hard to find
Who gives them both the victory.

While he occupied this position, he once had a daughter married. To the wedding he invited all the townspeople and the king's entourage, paid them much honor, feasted them, and regaled them with gifts of garments and the like. And when the wedding was over, he conducted the king home with his ladies and showed him reverence.

Now the king had a house-cleaning drudge named Bull, who took a seat that did not belong to him—this in the very palace, and in the presence of the king's professor. So Strong-Tooth administered a cuffing and drove him out. From that moment the humiliation so rankled in Bull's inner soul that he had no rest even at night. Yet he thought: "After all,