commiseration for the spectacle.

"The mother was greatly grieved at the body being suspended, and,
coming to words with her surviving son, commanded him, by any means he
could, to contrive how he might take down and bring away the corpse of
his brother; but, should he not do so, she threatened to go to the king
and tell who had the treasure. When the mother treated her surviving
son harshly, and he, with many entreaties, was unable to persuade her,
he contrived this plan: he put skins filled with wine on some asses,
and drove to where the corpse was detained, and there skilfully loosed
the strings of two or three of those skins, and, when the wine ran out,
he beat his head and cried aloud, as if he knew not which one to turn
to first. But the sentinels, seeing wine flow, ran with vessels and
caught it, thinking it their gain,--whereupon, the man, feigning anger,
railed against them. But the sentinels soothed and pacified him, and at
last he set the skins to rights again. More conversation passed; the
sentinels joked with him and moved him to laughter, and he gave them
one of the skins, and lay down with them and drank, and thus they all
became of a party; and the sentinels, becoming exceedingly drunk, fell
asleep where they had been drinking. Then the thief took down the body
of his brother, and, departing, carried it to his mother, having obeyed
her injunctions.

"After this the king resorted to many devices to discover and take the
thief, but all failed through his daring and shrewdness: when, at last,
sending throughout all the cities, the king caused a proclamation to be
made, offering a pardon and even reward to the man, if he would
discover himself. The thief, relying on this promise, went to the
palace; and Rhampsinitus greatly admired him, and gave him his daughter
in marriage, accounting him the most knowing of all men; for that the