may trade and leave pastime and pleasuring." So he rose without
stay or delay, and repaired to a street wherein all his ten
friends lived. He went up to the nearest door and knocked;
whereupon a handmaid came out and asked him, "Who art thou?"; and
he answered, "Tell thy master that Nur al-Din Ali standeth at the
door and saith to him, 'Thy slave kisseth thy hand and awaiteth
thy bounty.'" The girl went in and told her master, who cried at
her, "Go back and say, 'My master is not at home.'" So she
returned to Nur al-Din, and said to him, "O my lord, my master is
out." Thereupon he turned away and said to himself, "If this one
be a whoreson knave and deny himself, another may not prove
himself such knave and whoreson." Then he went up to the next
door and sent in a like message to the house-master, who denied
himself as the first had done, whereupon he began repeating,

"He is gone who when to his gate thou go'st, * Fed thy famisht
maw with his boiled and roast."

When he had ended his verse he said, "By Allah, there is no help
but that I make trial of them all: perchance there be one amongst
them who will stand me in the stead of all the rest." So he went
the round of the ten, but not one of them would open his door to
him or show himself or even break a bit of bread before him;
whereupon he recited,

"Like a tree is he who in wealth doth wone, * And while fruits he
the folk to his fruit shall run:
But when bared the tree of what fruit it bare, * They leave it to
suffer from dust and sun.
Perdition to all of this age! I find * Ten rogues for every