I replied:  “Do not calumniate the rich, for they are the lords of munificence.”  He said:  “You mistake them, for they are the slaves of dinars and dirams, or their gold and silver coins.  For example, what profits it though they be the clouds of the spring, if they may not send us rain; or the fountain of the sun, and shine upon no one; or though they be mounted on the steed of capability, and advance not towards anybody?  They will not move a step for the sake of God, nor bestow their charity without laying you under obligation and thanks.  They hoard their money with solicitude, watch it while they live with sordid meanness, and leave it behind them with deadening regret, verifying the saying of the wise:  ’That the money of the miser is coming out of the earth when he is himself going into it:’—­One man hoards a treasure with pain and tribulation, another comes and spends it without tribulation or pain.”

I replied:  “You could have ascertained the parsimony of the wealthy only through the medium of your own beggary; otherwise to him who lays covetousness aside the generous man and miser seem all one.  The touchstone can prove which is pure gold, and the beggar can say which is the niggard.”  He said:  “I speak of them from experience; for they station dependants by their doors, and plant surly porters at their gates, to deny admittance to the worthy, and to lay violent hands upon the collars of the elect, and say:  ‘There is nobody at home’; and verily they tell what is true:—­When the master has not reason or judgment, understanding or discernment, the porter reported right of him, saying:  ‘There is nobody in the house.’”

I replied:  “They are excusable, inasmuch as they are worried out of their lives by importunate memorialists, and jaded to their hearts by indigent solicitors; and it might be reasonably doubted whether it would satisfy the eye of the covetous if the sands of the desert could be turned into pearls:—­The eye of the greedy is not to be filled with worldly riches, any more than a well can be replenished from the dew of night.  And had Hatim Tayi, who dwelt in the desert, come to live in a city, he would have been overwhelmed with the importunities of mendicants, and they would have torn the clothes from his back:—­Look not towards me, lest thou should draw the eyes of others, for at the mendicant’s hand no good can be expected.”

He said:  “I pity their condition.”  I replied:  “Not so; but you envy them their property.”  We were thus warm in argument, and both of us close engaged.  Whatever chess pawn he might advance I would set one in opposition to it; and whenever he put my king in check, I would relieve him with my queen; till he had exhausted all the coin in the purse of his resolution, and expended all the arrows of the quiver of his argument.  “Take heed and retreat not from the orator’s attack, for nothing is left him but metaphor and hyperbole.  Wield thy polemics and law citations, for the wordy