Like dying flute-tones, the night-winds whispered round Omar; his bosom heaved happily and pantingly, his eye was drunk with splendour, his ear with heavenly harmony; and from amid the effulgence stepped forth a form of light, and stood before the enraptured one; it was Asrael, the radiant angel of God. "Mount with me in these beams to the abodes of the blessed," cried the same sweet voice, "for thou hast deserved by thy nobleness of soul to view the blessedness of Paradise." "My Lord," said the trembling Omar, "how can I, a mortal, follow thee? My earthly body is not taken from me yet." "Give me thy hand," said the form of light. Omar tendered him it with trembling rapture, and they soared through the clouds on the crimson beams. They traversed the stars, and sweet sounds waited on their steps, and the blush of morning lay in ambush in their path, and the fragrance of flowers filled the air with aroma. Of a sudden it was night. Omar shrieked aloud, and found himself lying at the foot of the crag, with shattered arms. The dark red moon just rose from behind a hill, casting its first doubtful gleams on the rocky valley. "Oh, thrice-wretched me!" cried Omar lamentingly, on recovering his senses. "Was Heaven so little satisfied with my misery that it must dash me in a false dream from the peak of the rock, and shatter my limbs, that I might become the prey of hunger? Is it thus that it compensates my pity for the unfortunate? Oh, who was ever unhappier than I?" A figure shuffled past him with pain, and Omar recognised him to be the beggar to whom he that very day had given the remainder of his money. Omar called out to him, and besought him in a pitiful strain to share with him the benefaction which he himself had bestowed, but the cripple went heedlessly gasping on his way; so that Omar did not know whether he had heard him, or was only dissembling, that he might seem to have a right to disregard him. "Am I not more wretched than this outcast?" said Omar, lamenting amid the stillness of night. "Who will take pity on me, now that all is taken from me that could comfort me?" He fetched a deep sigh, his arms pained him, a burning fire raged in his bones, and every breath was drawn in torture. Now he took a review of his fortune, and, for the first time, thought once more on his brother. "Oh, where art thou, noble-minded one?" cried he; "perhaps the sword of the angel of death has already smitten thee; misery perhaps has consumed thee in the most wearing poverty, and thou hast cursed thy poor brother in the last hour of anguish. Ah! I have deserved this at thy hands; now do I suffer the penalty of my ingratitude, my hard-heartedness! Heaven is just!--And I too could stalk along so proudly, and call on God to witness my virtue! O Heaven, forgive the sinner who, without a murmur, bows to thy chastisement."