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said to them, ‘What is to do?’ They told him what had happened and he said, ‘What is their worth that ye should be concerned for them? Go your ways.’ And he sat laughing and was neither angry nor troubled concerning the matter; whereupon the king looked in the vizier’s face and said to him, ‘What manner of man is this, with whom wealth is of no account? Needs must there be a reason for this.’ Then they talked with him awhile and the king said to him, ‘O my son-in-law, I have a mind to go, thou and I and the vizier, to a garden, where we may divert ourselves.’ ‘I will well,’ said Marouf. So they went forth to a garden, wherein were two kinds of every sort of fruit, and it was full of running waters and tall trees and carolling birds. There they entered a pavilion, whose sight did away sorrow from the heart, and sat talking, whilst the vizier entertained them with rare stories and merry jests and mirth-provoking sayings and Marouf listened, till the time of the noon-meal came, when they set on a tray of meats and a pitcher of wine.
When they had eaten and washed their hands, the vizier filled the cup and gave it to the king, who drank it off; then he filled a second and gave it to Marouf, saying, ‘Take the cup of the drink to which the reason bows its neck in reverence.’ ‘What is this, O vizier?’ asked Marouf. Quoth he, ‘This is the hoary[1] virgin and the old maid long kept in the house,[2] the giver of joy to hearts, whereof saith the poet:
The feet of the sturdy renegades[3] went trampling it of yore, And so of the Arabs’ heads its wreak it taketh evermore.
Let one of the sons of the infidels, a moon o’ the dark, whose looks To disobedience still invite, the grape-juice to thee pour.
- ↑ Semble an allusion to the froth of the wine, when first poured out, or, perhaps, simply to its age.
- ↑ i.e. old wine long kept in cask or bottle.
- ↑ Aalaj, pl. of ilj, lit. a sturdy foreign unbeliever. The true believer may not assist in the making of wine, Mohammed having cursed its presser, its drinker, its carrier, its seller and its buyer.
