A person announced to Nushirowan the Just, saying, "I have heard that God, glorious and great, has removed from this world a certain man who was your enemy." He said, "Have you had any intelligence that he has overlooked me? In the death of a rival I have no room for exultation, since my life also is not to last forever." XXXVIII At the court of Kisra, or Nushirowan, a cabinet council was debating some state affair. Abu-zarchamahr, who sat as president, was silent. They asked him, "Why do you not join us in this discussion?" He replied, "Such ministers of state are like physicians, and a physician will prescribe a medicine only to a sick man; accordingly, so long as I see that your opinions are judicious, it were ill-judged in me to obtrude a word.--While business can proceed without my interference, it does not behoove me to speak on the subject; but were I to see a blind man walking into a pit, I would be much to blame if I remained silent." XXXIX When he reduced the kingdom of Misr, or Egypt, to obedience, Harun-al-Rashid said, "In contempt of that impious rebel (Pharaoh), who, in his pride of the sovereignty of Egypt, boasted a divinity, I will bestow its government only on the vilest of my slaves." He had a negro bondsman, called Khosayib, preciously stupid, and him he appointed to rule over Egypt. They tell us that his judgment and understanding were such, that when a body of farmers complained to him, saying, "We had planted some cotton shrubs on the banks of the Nile, and the rains came unseasonably, and swept them all away;"--he replied, "You ought to sow wool, that it might not be swept away!" A good and holy man heard this, and said: "Were our fortune to be increased in proportion to our knowledge, none could be scantier than the share of the fool; but fortune will bestow such wealth upon the ignorant as shall astonish a hundred of the learned. Power and fortune depend not on knowledge, they are obtained only through the aid of heaven; for it has often happened in this world that the illiterate are honored, and the wise held in scorn. The fool in his idleness found a treasure under a ruin; the chemist, or projector, fell the victim of disappointment and chagrin." CHAPTER II Of the Morals of Dervishes I A person of distinction asked a parsa, or devout and holy man, saying, "What do you offer in justification of a certain abid, another species of Mohammedan monk, whose character others have been so ready to question?" He replied: "In his outward behavior I see nothing to blame, and with the secrets of his heart I claim no acquaintance.--Whomsoever thou seest in a parsa's habit, consider him a parsa, or holy, and esteem him as a good man; and if thou knowest not what is passing in his mind, what business has the mohtasib, or censor, with the inside of the house?" II