required of provaunt and else beside, and sat eating and
carousing and drinking till mid day, when my master, having need
of some matter from his home, said to me, "O slave, mount the she
mule and hie thee to the house and bring from thy mistress such
and such a thing and return quickly." I obeyed his bidding and
started for the house but, as I drew near it, I began to cry out
and shed tears, whereupon all the people of the quarter
collected, great and small; and my master's wife and daughters,
hearing the noise I was making, opened the door and asked me what
was the matter. Said I, "My master was sitting with his friends
beneath an old wall, and it fell on one and all of them; and when
I saw what had happened to them, I mounted the mule and came
hither in haste to tell you." When my master's daughters and wife
heard this, they screamed and rent their raiment and beat their
faces, whilst the neighbours came around them. Then the wife over
turned the furniture of the house, one thing upon another, and
tore down the shelves and broke the windows and the lattices and
smeared the walls with mud and indigo, saying to me, "Woe to
thee, O Kafur! come help me to tear down these cupboards and
break up these vessels and this china ware,[FN#96] and the rest
of it." So I went to her and aided her to smash all the shelves
in the house with whatever stood upon them, after which I went
round about the terrace roofs and every part of the place,
spoiling all I could and leaving no china in the house unbroken
till I had laid waste the whole, crying out the while "Well away!
my master!" Then my mistress fared forth bare faced wearing a
head kerchief and naught else, and her daughters and the children
sallied out with her, and said to me, "O Kafur, go thou before us
and show us the place where thy master lieth dead, that we may
take him from under the fallen wall and lay him on a bier and