"You be three and want a fourth who shall be a person of good sense and prudence, smart-witted, and one apt to keep careful counsel." His words pleased and amused them much, and they laughed at him and said: "And who is to assure us of that? We are maidens, and we fear to entrust our secret where it may not be kept, for we have read in a certain chronicle the lines of one Ibn al-Sumam:
"Hold fast thy secret and to none unfold,
Lost is a secret when that secret's told.
An fail thy breast thy secret to conceal,
How canst thou hope another's breast shall hold?"
When the porter heard their words, he rejoined: "By your lives! I am a man of sense and a discreet, who hath read books and perused chronicles. I reveal the fair and conceal the foul and I act as the poet adviseth:
"None but the good a secret keep,
And good men keep it unrevealed.
It is to me a well-shut house
With keyless locks and door ensealed."
When the maidens heard his verse and its poetical application addressed to them, they said: "Thou knowest that we have laid out all our moneys on this place. Now say, hast thou aught to offer us in return for entertainment? For surely we will not suffer thee to sit in our company and be our cup companion, and gaze upon our faces so fair and so rare, without paying a round sum. Wettest thou not the saying:
"Sans hope of gain
Love's not worth a grain"?
Whereto the lady portress added, "If thou bring anything, thou art a something; if nothing, be off with thee, thou art a nothing." But the procuratrix interposed, saying: "Nay, O my sisters, leave teasing him, for by Allah he hath not failed us this day, and had he been other he never had kept patience with me, so whatever be his shot and scot I will take it upon myself."
The porter, overjoyed, kissed the ground before her and thanked her, saying, "By Allah, these moneys are the first fruits this day hath given me." Hearing this, they said, "Sit thee down and welcome to thee," and the eldest lady added: "By Allah, we may not suffer thee to join us save on one condition, and this it is, that no questions be asked as to what concerneth thee not, and frowardness shall be soundly flogged." Answered the porter: "I agree to this, O my lady. On my head and my eyes be it! Look ye, I am dumb, I have no tongue." Then arose the provisioneress and, tightening her girdle, set the table by the fountain and put the flowers and sweet herbs in their jars, and strained the wine and ranged the flasks in rows and made ready every requisite. Then sat she down, she and her sisters, placing amidst them the porter, who kept deeming himself in a dream. And she took up the wine flagon and poured out the first cup and drank it off, and likewise a second and a third. After this she filled a fourth cup, which she handed to one of her sisters, and lastly, she crowned a goblet and passed it to the porter, saying:
"Drink the dear draught, drink free and fain
What healeth every grief and pain."
He took the cup in his hand and, Touting low, returned his best thanks and improvised:
"Drain not the bowl save with a trusty friend,
A man of worth whose good old blood all know.
For wine, like wind, sucks sweetness from the sweet
And stinks when over stench it haply blow."
Adding:
"Drain not the bowl, save from dear hand like thine,
The cup recalls thy gifts, thou, gifts of wine."
After repeating this couplet he kissed their hands and drank and was drunk and sat swaying from side to side and pursued:
"All drinks wherein is blood the Law unclean
Doth hold save one, the bloodshed of the vine.
Fill! Fill! Take all my wealth bequeathed or won,
Thou fawn! a willing ransome for those eyne." |
