with merchandise, else will I doff clothes and don dervish gear
and fare a-wandering over the world." Shams al-Din rejoined, "I
am no penniless pauper but have great plenty of wealth;" then he
showed him all he owned of monies and stuffs and stock-in-trade
and observed, "With me are stuffs and merchandise befitting every
country in the world." Then he showed him among the rest, forty
bales ready bound, with the price, a thousand dinars, written on
each, and said, "O my son take these forty loads, together with
the ten which thy mother gave thee, and set out under the
safeguard of Almighty Allah. But, O my child, I fear for thee a
certain wood in thy way, called the Lion's Copse,[FN#39] and a
valley highs the Vale of Dogs, for there lives are lost without
mercy." He said, "How so, O my father?"; and he replied, "Because
of a Badawi bandit named Ajlan." Quoth Ala al-Din, "Such is
Allah's luck; if any share of it be mine, no harm shall hap to
me." Then they rode to the cattle bazar, where behold, a
cameleer[FN#40] alighted from his she mule and kissing the
Consul's hand, said to him, "O my lord, it is long, by Allah,
since thou hast employed us in the way of business." He replied,
"Every time hath its fortune and its men,[FN#41] and Allah have
truth on him who said,

'And the old man crept o'er the worldly ways * So bowed, his
beard o'er his knees down flow'th:
Quoth I, 'What gars thee so doubled go?' * Quoth he (as to me his
hands he show'th)
'My youth is lost, in the dust it lieth; * And see, I bend me to
find my youth.'"[FN#42]

Now when he had ended his verses, he said, "O chief of the