Then he looked down, and he turned not a glance, he answered not a word: so that we said, "A fear has confounded him or a stupor struck him dumb." Then he raised his head and drew his breath, and said, "I swear by the heaven with its constellations, and the earth with its plains, and the pouring flood, and the blazing sun, and the sounding sea, and the wind and the dust-storm, that this is the most sure of charms, one that will best suffice you for the wearers of the helmet. He who repeats it at the smiling of the dawn has no alarm of danger to the red of eve; and he who whispers it to the vanguard of the dark is safe the night long from plunder." Said the narrator: So we learned it till we knew it thoroughly, and rehearsed it together that we might not forget it. Then we set forth, urging the beasts by prayers, not by the song of drivers; and guarding the loads by words, not by warriors. And our companion frequented us evening and morning, but required not of us our promises: till when we spied the house-tops of 'Anah, he said to us, "Now, your help, your help!" Then we set before him the exposed and the hidden, and showed him the corded and the sealed, and said to him, "Decide as thou wilt, for thou wilt find among us none but will consent." But nothing enlivened him but the light, the adorning; nothing was comely in his eye but the coin. So of those he loaded on his burden, and rose up with enough to repair his poverty. Then he dodged us as dodges the cut-purse, and slipped away from us as slips quicksilver. And his departure saddened us, his shooting away astonished us: and we ceased not to seek him in every assembly, and to ask news of him from each that might mislead or guide. Until it was said, "Since he entered 'Anah he has not quitted the tavern." Then the foulness of this report set me on to test it, and to walk in a path to which I belonged not. So I went by night to the wine-hall in disguised habit; and there was the old man in a gay-colored dress amid casks and wine-vats; and about him were cup-bearers surpassing in beauty, and lights that glittered, and the myrtle and the jasmine, and the pipe and the lute. And at one time he bade broach the wine-casks, and at another he called the lutes to give utterance; and now he inhaled the perfumes, and now he courted the gazelles. But when I had thus stumbled on his hypocrisy, and the differing of his to-day from his yesterday, I said to him, Woe to thee, accursed! hast thou forgotten the day at the Jayrun? But he laughed heartily, and then indited charmingly: I cling to journeying, I cross deserts, I loathe pride that I may cull joy: And I plunge into floods, and tame steeds that I may draw the trains of pleasure and delight. And I throw away staidness, and sell my land, for the sipping of wine, for the quaffing of cups. And were it not for longing after the drinking of wine my mouth would not utter its elegancies;