The Alide was so highly pleased with this answer that he filled Yahya's mouth with pearls. Yahya, who died on March 30, 872, had a very graceful turn for apophthegms. "True friendship," said he, "cannot be augmented by kindness nor diminished by unkindness." And again, he said: "To him who is going to see a true friend the way never appears long; he who goes to visit his beloved never feels lonely on the road." The exaltation of friendship is indeed one of the beautiful things about this book. And the reader can never have too much of it. Buri Taj Al-Muluk was, says Ibn Khallikan, merely a man of talent, but the following verse by him contains a perfectly splendid compliment: _My friend approached from the west, riding on a grey horse, and I exclaimed: "Glory to the Almighty! the sun has risen in the west!"_ At-Tihami, the poet, one of whose poems, an elegy on the death of his son, brings ill-luck when quoted, wrote these admirable lines on the same theme: _In the company of noble-minded men there is always room for another. Friendship, it is true, renders difficulties easy: a house may be too small for eight persons, yet friendship will make it hold a ninth._ XV.--A NIGHT SCENE The capriciousness of the moods of these sombre and terrible Eastern autocrats--the strange sentimental chinks in their armour--are seen in the very characteristic story which follows. "Secret information having been given to Al-Mutawakkil that the imam, Abu 'l-Hasan Al-Askari, had a quantity of arms, books, and other objects for the use of his followers concealed in his house, and being induced by malicious reports to believe that he aspired to the empire, he sent one night some soldiers of the Turkish guard to break in on him when he least expected such a visit. "They found him quite alone and locked up in his room, clothed in a hair-shirt, his head covered with a woollen cloak, and turned with his face in the direction of Mecca, chanting, in this attitude, some verses of the _Koran_ expressive of God's promises and threats, and having no other carpet between him and the earth than sand and gravel. "He was carried off in that attire and brought, in the depth of the night, before Al-Mutawakkil, who was then engaged in drinking wine. On seeing him, the khalif received him with respect, and being informed that nothing had been found in his house to justify the suspicions cast upon him, he seated him by his side and offered him the goblet which he held in his hand. "'Commander of the Faithful!' said Abu 'l-Hasan, 'a liquor such as that was never yet combined with my flesh and blood; dispense me therefore from taking it.' "The khalif acceded to his request, and then asked him to repeat some verses which might amuse him.