Then the old woman turned round sharply to Shibli Bagarag, and said, ’How of thy tackle, O my betrothed?’

He answered, ‘The edge is keen, the hand ready.’

Then said she, ‘’Tis well.’

So the old woman put her two hands on the shoulders of Shibli Bagarag, saying, ’Make thy reverence to him on the raised seat; have faith in thy tackle and in me.  Renounce not either, whatsoever ensueth.  Be not abashed, O my bridegroom to be!’

Thereupon she thrust him in; and Shibli Bagarag was abashed, and played foolishly with his fingers, knowing not what to do.  So when the Chief Vizier saw him he cried out, ‘Who art thou, and what wantest thou?’

Now, the back of Shibli Bagarag tingled when he heard the Vizier’s voice, and he said, ’I am, O man of exalted condition, he whom men know as Shibli Bagarag, nephew to Baba Mustapha, the renowned of Shiraz; myself barber likewise, proud of my art, prepared to exercise it.’

Then said the Chief Vizier, ’This even to our faces!  Wonderful is the audacity of impudence!  Know, O nephew of the barber, thou art among them that honour not thy art.  Is it not written, For one thing thou shaft be crowned here, for that thing be thwacked there?  So also it is written, The tongue of the insolent one is a lash and a perpetual castigation to him.  And it is written, O Shibli Bagarag, that I reap honour from thee, and there is no help but that thou be made an example of.’

So the Chief Vizier uttered command, and Shibli Bagarag was ware of the power of five slaves upon him; and they seized him familiarly, and placed him in position, and made ready his clothing for the reception of fifty other thwacks with a thong, each several thwack coming down on him with a hiss, as it were a serpent, and with a smack, as it were the mouth of satisfaction; and the people assembled extolled the Chief Vizier, saying, ’Well and valiantly done, O stay of the State! and such-like to the accursed race of barbers.’

Now, when they had passed before the Chief Vizier and departed, lo! he fell to laughing violently, so that his hair was agitated and was as a sand-cloud over him, and his countenance behind it was as the sun of the desert reflected ripplingly on the waters of a bubbling spring, for it had the aspect of merriness; and the Chief Vizier exclaimed, ’O Shibli Bagarag, have I not made fair show?’

And Shibli Bagarag said, ‘Excellent fair show, O mighty one!’ Yet knew he not in what, but he was abject by reason of the thwacks.

So the Vizier said, ’Thou lookest lean, even as one to whom Fortune oweth a long debt.  Tell me now of thy barbercraft:  perchance thy gain will be great thereby?’

And Shibli Bagarag answered, ’My gain has been great, O eminent in rank, but of evil quality, and I am content not to increase it.’  And he broke forth into lamentations, crying in excellent verse:—­

Why am I thus the sport of all—­
A thing Fate knocketh like a ball
From point to point of evil chance,
Even as the sneer of Circumstance? 
While thirsting for the highest fame,
I hunger like the lowest beast: 
To be the first of men I aim
And find myself the least.