Then resumed the Fowl-let, “Woe to thee, O mean and mesquin thou wottedst not that which thou hast lost in me, for indeed baulked is thy bent and foiled is thy fortune and near to thee is poverty and nigh to thee is obscurity.  Hadst thou when taking me cut my throat and cloven my crop thou hadst found therein a jewel the weight of an ounce which I picked up and swallowed from the treasury of Kisra Anushirwan the King.”  But when the Birder heard the Birdie’s words he scattered dust upon his head and buffeted his face and plucked out his beard and rent his raiment, and at last slipped down a swooning to the ground.  And presently recovering his senses he looked towards his late captive and cried, “O Father of Flight, O thou The Wind hight say me is there any return for thee me-wards, where thou shalt with me abide, and thee within the apple of mine eye will I hide, and after all this toil and turmoil I will perfume and fumigate thee with ambergris and with Comorin lign-aloes, and I will bring thee sugar for food and nuts of the pine[FN#307] and with me thou shalt tarry in highmost degree?” Replied the Birdie, “O miserable, past is that which passed; I mean, suffice me not thy fraud and thy flattering falsehood.  And laud to the Lord, O thou meanest of men, how soon hast thou forgotten the three charges wherewith I charged thee!  And how short are thy wits seeing that the whole of me weighteth not ten drachms[FN#308] and how then can I bear in crop a jewel weighing an ounce?  How far from thee is subtilty and how speedily hast thou forgotten mine injunctions wherewith I enjoined thee saying, ’Believe not aught save that whereon thine eye is cast nor regret and bemourn the past nor at what cometh rejoice too fast.’  These words of wisdom are clean gone from thy memory, and hadst thou been nimble of wits thou hadst slaughtered me forthright:  however, Alhamdolillah—­Glory to God, who caused me not to savour the whittle’s sharp edge, and I thank my Lord for my escape and for the loosing of my prosperity from the trap of trouble.”  Now when the Birder heard these words of the Birdie he repented and regretted his folly, and he cried, “O my sorrow for what failed me of the slaughter of this volatile,” and as he sank on the ground he sang,[FN#309]

“O brave was the boon which I held in my right * Yet O Maker of
     man, ’twas in self despight. 
Had my lot and my luck been of opulence, * This emptiness never
     had proved my plight.”

Hereupon the Fowl let farewelled the Fowler and took flight until he reached his home and household, where he seated him and recited all that had befallen him with the Birder, to wit, how the man had captured him, and how he had escaped by sleight, and he fell to improvising,

“I charged you, O brood of my nestlings, and said, * Ware yon
     Wady, nor seek to draw near a stead
Where sitteth a man who with trap and with stakes * Entrapped me,
     drew knife and would do me dead. 
And he longed to destroy me, O children, but I * Was saved by the
     Lord and to you was sped.”