Now, he came to a knoll of sand under a palm, from which the yellow domes and mosques of the city of Shagpat, and its black cypresses, and marble palace fronts, and shining pillars, and lofty carven arches that spanned half-circles of the hot grey sky, were plainly visible.  Then gazed he awhile despondingly on the city of Shagpat, and groaned in contemplation of his evil plight, as is said by the poet: 

     The curse of sorrow is comparison! 
        As the sun casteth shade, night showeth star,
     We, measuring what we were by what we are,
        Behold the depth to which we are undone.

Wherefore he counselleth: 

     Look neither too much up, nor down at all,
     But, forward stepping, strive no more to fall.

And the advice is excellent; but, as is again said: 

     The preacher preacheth, and the hearer heareth,
     But comfort first each function requireth.

And ‘wisdom to a hungry stomach is thin pottage,’ saith the shrewd reader of men.  Little comfort was there with Shibli Bagarag, as he looked on the city of Shagpat the clothier!  He cried aloud that his evil chance had got the better of him, and rolled his body in the sand, beating his breast, and conjuring up images of the profusion of dainties and the abundance of provision in Shiraz, exclaiming, ’Well-a-way and woe’s me! this it is to be selected for the diversion of him that plotteth against man.’  Truly is it written: 

     On different heads misfortunes come: 
        One bears them firm, another faints,
     While this one hangs them like a drum
        Whereon to batter loud complaints.

And of the three kinds, they who bang the drum outnumber the silent ones as do the billows of the sea the ships that swim, or the grains of sand the trees that grow; a noisy multitude.

Now, he was in the pits of despondency, even as one that yieldeth without further struggle to the waves of tempest at midnight, when he was ware of one standing over him,—­a woman, old, wrinkled, a very crone, with but room for the drawing of a thread between her nose and her chin; she was, as is cited of them who betray the doings of Time,

     Wrinkled at the rind, and overripe at the core,

and every part of her nodded and shook like a tree sapped by the waters, and her joints were sharp as the hind-legs of a grasshopper; she was indeed one close-wrecked upon the rocks of Time.

Now, when the old woman had scanned Shibli Bagarag, she called to him, ’O thou! what is it with thee, that thou rollest as one reft of his wits?’

He answered her, ’I bewail my condition, which is beggary, and the lack of that which filleth with pleasantness.’

So the old woman said, ‘Tell me thy case.’