accounts and ordered his income and expenditure for a month, at
the end of which he found his income increased and his
disbursements diminished; wherefore he thanked me and made my
wage a dirham a day. When the year was out, he proposed to me to
marry his daughter and become his partner in the shop. I agreed
to this and went in to my wife and applied me to the shop. But I
was broken in heart and spirit, and grief was manifest upon me;
and the grocer used to drink and invite me thereto, but I
refrained for melancholy. I abode on this wise two years till,
one day, as I sat in the shop, behold, there passed by a parcel
of people with meat and drink, and I asked the grocer what was
the matter. Quoth he, 'This is the day of the pleasure-makers,
when all the musicians and dancers of the town go forth with the
young men of fortune to the banks of the Ubullah river[FN#50] and
eat and drink among the trees there.' The spirit prompted me to
solace myself with the sight of this thing and I said in my mind,
'Haply among these people I may foregather with her I love.' So I
told the grocer that I had a mind to this and he said, 'Up and go
with them an thou please.' He made me ready meat and drink and I
went till I came to the River of Ubullah, when, behold, the folk
were going away: I also was about to follow, when I espied the
Rais of the bark wherein the Hashimi had been with the damsel and
he was going along the river. I cried out to him and his company
who knew me and took me onboard with them and said to me, 'Art
thou yet alive?'; and they embraced me and questioned me of my
case. I told them my tale and they said, 'Indeed, we thought that
drunkenness had gotten the better of thee and that thou hadst
fallen into the water and wast drowned.' Then I asked them of the
damsel, and they answered, 'When she came to know of thy loss,
she rent her raiment and burnt the lute and fell to buffeting