While aloud cried Earth and her earth-borns too *
'Hail and welcome who comest with grace to endue.'"

They thanked him for this, and Taj al-Muluk ceased not to wash
him and to pour water over him and he thought his soul in
Paradise. When they had made an end of his service, he blessed
them and sat by the side of the Wazir, talking but gazing the
while on the youths. Presently, the servants brought them
towels, and they dried themselves and donned their dress. Then
they went out, and the Minister turned to the Syndic and said to
him, "O my lord! verily the bath is the Paradise[FN#21] of this
world." Replied the Overseer, "Allah vouchsafe to thee such
Paradise, and health to thy sons and guard them from the evil
eye! Do ye remember aught that the eloquent have said in praise
of the bath.?" Quoth Taj al-Muluk, "I will repeat for thee a pair
of couplets;" and he recited,

The life of the bath is the joy of man's life,[FN#22] *
Save that time is short for us there to bide:
A Heaven where irksome it were to stay; *
A Hell, delightful at entering-tide."

When he ended his recital, quoth Aziz, "And I also remember two
couplets in praise of the bath." The Overseer said, "Let me hear
them," so he repeated the following,

"A house where flowers from stones of granite grow, *
Seen at its best when hot with living lows:
Thou deem'st it Hell but here, forsooth, is Heaven, *
And some like suns and moons within it show."