Men by comparison all are brethren, their father is Adam their mother is Eve;

but certain people are preferable to others.  Then he came up to Attaf and made him be seated and wiped off the blood from his face and washed him and shook off the dust that was upon him and said, O my brother, what is thy need? and said he, My need is the sending of this paper to Ja’afar.  The servant took the paper from his hand and going in to Ja’afar the Barmeky found there the officers of the Governor and the Barmekys standing at his service on his right and on his left; and Ja’afar the Wazir who held in his hand a cup of wine was reciting poetry and playing and saying, O you all here assembled, the absent from the eye is not like the present in the heart; he is my brother and my friend and my benefactor, Attaf of Damascus, who was continuous in his generosity and his bounty and his benfactions to me; who for me divorced his cousin-wife and gave her to me.  He made me presents of horses and slaves and damsels and stuffs in quantities that I might furnish her dower; and, if he had not acted thus, I should certainly have been ruined.  He was my benefactor without knowing who I was, and generous to me without any idea of profiting by it.  The Rawi says that when the good servant heard these words from his lord he rejoiced and coming forward he kneeled down before him and presented the paper.  When Ja’afar read it he was in a state of intoxication and not being able to discern what he was doing he fell on his face to the floor while holding the paper and the glass in his hand, and he was wounded in the forehead so his blood ran and he fainted and the paper fell from his grasp.  When the servant saw that he hastened to depart fearing the consequence; and the Wazir Ja’afar’s friends seated their lord and staunched the blood.  They exclaimed, There is no power and strength but in God the High, the Mighty.  Such is the character of servants; they trouble the life of kings in their pleasures and annoy them in their humours:  Wallahy, the writer of this paper merits nothing less than to be handed over to the Wali who shall give him five hundred lashes and put him in prison.  Thereupon the Wazir’s doorkeeper went out and asked for the owner of the paper, when Attaf answered, ’Tis I, O my lord.  Then they seized him and sent him to the Wali and ordered him to give one hundred blows of the stick to the prisoner and to write upon his chain “for life.”  Thus they did with Attaf and carried him to the prison where he remained for two months when a child was born to Harun er-Rashid, who then ordered that alms should be distributed, and good done to all, and bade liberate all that were in prison and among those that were set free was Attaf.  When he found himself out of gaol, beaten and famished and naked, he looked up to heaven and exclaimed, Thanks be to thee, O Lord, in every situation, and crying said, It must be for some fault committed by me in the past, for God had taken me into favour and I have said repaid Him in disobedience; but I pray to Him for pardon for having gone too far in my debauchery.  Then he recited these verses:—­