Thus we remained a long season; he produced for me daily some pleasantness, and drove some doubt from my heart, until the hand of want mixed for him the cup of parting, and the lack of a meal urged him to abandon Irak; and the failures of supply cast him into desert regions, and the waving of the banner of distress ranged him in the line of travelers; and he sharpened for departure the edge of determination, and journeyed away, drawing my heart with his leading cord. After he was gone none pleased me who kept by me, none filled me with affection by urging me to intimacy. Since he strayed away none has appeared to me his like in excellence; no friend has gotten the equal of his qualities. So he was hidden from me a season: I knew not his lair; I found none to tell of him; but when I had returned from my wandering to the place where my branch had sprouted, I was once present in the town library, which is the council-hall of scholars, the meeting-place of residents and strangers: Then there entered one with a thick beard and a squalid aspect, and he saluted those who sat, and took seat in the last rows of the people. Then began he to produce what was in his wallet, and to astonish those present by the sagacity of his judgment. And he said to the man who was next him, "What is the book into which thou lookest?" He said, "The poems of Abu 'Obadeh; him of whose excellence men bear witness." He said, "In what thou hast seen hast thou hit on any fine thing which thou admirest?" He said, "Yes; the line, As though she smiled from strung pearls or hailstones, or camomile-flowers. For it is original in the use of similitude which it contains." He said to him, "Here is a wonder! here is a lack of taste, Sir, thou hast taken for fat what is only swollen; thou hast blown on that which is no fuel: where art thou in comparison with the rare verse which unites the similitudes of the teeth? My life a ransom for those teeth whose beauty charms, and which a purity adorns sufficing thee for all other. She parts her lips from fresh pearls, and from hail-stones, and from camomile-flowers, and from the palm-shoot, and from bubbles.