XXIX

Abu-Horairah was making a daily visit to the prophet Mustafa Mohammed, on whom be God’s blessing and peace.  He said:  “O Abu-Horairah! let me alone every other day, that so affection may increase; that is, come not every day, that we may get more loving!”

They said to a good and holy man, “Notwithstanding all these charms which the sun commands, we have never heard of anybody that has fallen in love with him!” He answered, “It is because he is seen every day, unless during the winter, when he is veiled (in the clouds), and thus much coveted and loved.”—­To visit mankind has no blame in it, but not to such a degree as to let them say, Enough of it.  If we see occasion to interrogate ourselves, we need not listen to the reprehension of others.

XXX

Having taken offence with the society of my friends at Damascus, I retired into the wilderness of the Holy Land, or Jerusalem, and sought the company of brutes till such time as I was made a prisoner by the Franks, and employed by them, along with some Jews, in digging earth in the ditches of Tripoli.  At length one of the chiefs of Aleppo, between whom and me an intimacy had of old subsisted, happening to pass that way, recognized me, and said, “How is this? and how came you to be thus occupied?” I replied:  “What can I say?—­I was flying from mankind into the forests and mountains, for my resource was in God and in none else.  Fancy to thyself what my condition must now be, when forced to associate with a tribe scarcely human?—­To be linked in a chain with a company of acquaintance were pleasanter than to walk in a garden with strangers.”

He took pity on my situation; and, having for ten dinars redeemed me from captivity with the Franks, carried me along with him to Aleppo.  Here he had a daughter, and her he gave me in marriage, with a dower of a hundred dinars.  Soon after this damsel turned out a termagant and vixen, and discovered such a perverse spirit and virulent tongue as quite unhinged all my domestic comfort.—­A scolding wife in the dwelling of a peaceful man is his hell, even in this world.  Protect and guard us against a wicked inmate.  Save us, O Lord, and preserve us from the fiery, or hell, torture.

Having on one occasion given a liberty to the tongue of reproach, she was saying, “Are you not the fellow whom my father redeemed from the captivity of the Franks for ten dinars?” I replied, “Yes, I am that same he delivered from captivity for ten dinars, and enslaved me with you for a hundred!” I have heard that a reverend and mighty man released a sheep from the paws and jaws of a wolf.  That same night he was sticking a knife into its throat, when the spirit of the sheep reproached him, saying, “Thou didst deliver me from the clutches of a wolf, when I at length saw that thou didst prove a wolf to me thyself.”