The Seller Of Words

A certain king often became bored with the cares and labours of government and yearned for a change. And when his ears grew tired of hearing the long reports of his counsellors, and his hand weary of pressing the signet-ring in the purple wax of royal decrees he would slip out, as soon as chance offered, with his grand vizier. The two, disguised as merchants, would then stroll through the streets of the city, ready for any adventure which might be fall them.

As they were wandering through a distant quarter of the city they came to a small square, where they spied an old dervish squatting on the ground before a pair of scales. Yet he was weighing nothing on his scale, for it was plain that he had nothing to weigh, and this strange sight so excited the curiosity of the king that he said to the dervish:

"Tell me, worthy and saintly dervish, what is it you sell, for though I see you adjusting your scales you seem to have no goods to put in them!"

The old dervish smiled: "I have something to sell more valuable than all the riches to be found in the shops of the jewellers, or in the bazaars of the silk or spice merchants," he answered. "I am a seller of words!"

Then the king smiled at his vizier and winked, as much to say: "Let us humour the old fellow!" And turning again to the dervish he asked: "And, pray, how do you sell your words?"

"Cheap enough," answered the holy man. "I ask but five dirhems a phrase." With that he placed a small weight in one of the balances of his scales and held out his hand. So the king slipped five dirhems into his hand, and the old dervish, as though he were weighing out a phrase, looked up and said:
"Do not begin an act....." 

and there he stopped. "Is that all?" cried the king in amazement. 

"That is all for five dirhems," replied the dervish roguishly. I have weighed you exactly what you are entitled to have!" 

Then the king saw that the old man knew what he was about: 

"In for a dirhem in for a dinar," 

he said to his vizier, and slipping another five dirhems into the dervish's hand, begged him to weigh out the rest of the sentence. And the dervish went on from where he had left off:

".....whose end you cannot foresee!"

Then the king who was tickled by the old dervish's shrewdness thanked him solemnly and passed on with his vizier, smiling to think he had paid ten 'dirhems' to learn the saying:

"Do not begin an act whose end you cannot foresee."

But as he kept on thinking about the simple words they seemed to gain in meaning and importance, and by the time he got back to the palace he was so impressed by them that he called for skilled artists, and had the dervish's saying woven in golden letters into a beautiful Arabesque designs which covered his palace walls. So that the eye could not fail to mark the words, he had designs repeated in every room.

One day the king became afflicted with a tumour which grew so large and gave him so much pain that he decided to have it lanced. The royal surgeon was sent for and he came to the palace with the old lancet which he had inherited from his father before him. It was a plain-looking instrument, with a simple horn handle, but its blade was keen and bright, and the old surgeon was used to it.

But when he was about to be led into the. king's presence he was stopped by the grand vizier, who was secretly in league with plotters against the king. He led him aside and said:
"Let me see the lancet with which you are going to open the king's tumour." And the surgeon drew out the homely old lancet and showed it to the grand vizier. Then the latter, with a great show of indignation, cried: "O barber without a conscience! O surgeon void of all reverence for Allah's chosen! Are you not ashamed to bare so cheap and homely a lancet before the eyes of the august king! Put it away, put it away, and do not dare show it! Here is lancet more fit to apply the healing wound to the king''s tumour! Here is a lancet which need not bring a blush to the king's cheeks, while yours looks as though it had been used for centuries on the ignoble swellings of the lowliest of came-drivers!"

And with that the grand vizier handed the astonished surgeon a flashing lancet with a handle of mother-of-pearls set with jewels, and sent him in to the presence of the king.

As soon as he made his salaam, the surgeon set about his preparations. But while waiting for the basin he had asked to be brought, so that the blood which flowed would not spurt over the costly rugs which covered the floor, his eye happened to fall on the saying which ran along the wall:

"Do not begin an act whose end you cannot foresee!"

And the word "end" made him think of his lancet, for it was with its end that he would have to open the king's tumour. And it occurred to the honest surgeon that he did not know the end of this new jewelled lancet which had been thrust upon him, and therefore could not foresee what the result of his using it would be.

So he said to himself: "I do not know the end of this thing. But I do know the end of my father's trusty blade, which never had failed me." And after a moment's hesitation he laid down the lancet which the grand vizier had given him and drew from his girdle his proved and reliable old knife.

Now the king had been watching the surgeon. He had noticed his hesitation, and seeing him change from one lancet to another asked him why and wherefore. So the surgeon told him what had happened to him before he had entered his presence. And the king shuddered, for he knew that the shadow of death had been resting above his head. For long he had suspected his grand vizier, and now he knew that the handsome new lancet, with its handle of mother-of-pearl and jewels, was to have been used to poison him. Its end had been dipped in a colourless poison which left no hint of its presence. But the king felt he must be just and not condemn his grand vizier unheard. So he sent for him and said:

"O most loyal and worthy vizier, before the surgeon opens my tumour let him bleed you, for you too full-blooded and it will benefit you, with the handsome new lancet your affection for me has led you to bestow on him!" And when the grand vizier turned pale and declared that he was in the best of health and a bleeding was the very last thing he needed, the king knew that he was indeed guilty.

Then the king clapped his hands and the gigantic blacks of his guards rushed in and forced the grand vizier to kneel while the surgeon bled him, and that was the end of the gran vizier. And then as soon as his tumour had been opened and his pain relieved, the king's messengers ran swiftly through the streets of the city while all made way for them, to find the old dervish. And they found the Seller of Words squatting before his scales in the grass-grown square of the distant quarter where the king first had met him. Then they cast a rich robe of honour over his shoulders, placed a jewelled turban on his head, and, hoisting him on a white Arabian steed from the royal stables, led him back to the palace to become grand vizier in the palace of the faithless one who so unwisely began an act whose end he could not forsee!