[15] In this Assembly Al Harith arrives in the town of San'a in Yemen, in great poverty; and, while seeking relief, encounters a crowd, which is gathered about a preacher. The discourse is a stern warning against self-indulgence, and an exhortation to repentance. Harith, wishing to learn who the preacher is, follows him to a cave, and there finds him enjoying himself with good food, and even with wine. He begins to rebuke him, but the preacher, throwing off disguise, extemporizes some lines, confessing that his preaching was only a device to obtain charity. Harith asks the attendant the name of the preacher, and is told that he is Abu Zayd, of Seruj. [16] In this Assembly the author displays more than his usual rhetorical subtlety, and while there is none more admired by those whose taste has been formed on Eastern models, there is none which appears more extravagant to the European student. Alliterations, verbal caprices, far-fetched expressions, and the conceits which were usual among poets of the age, so abound, that we may almost imagine the author to be desirous of satirizing what he professes to imitate. The subject is as follows: Harith in his passion for the society of literary persons makes his way to Holwan, a town in Irak, on the mountains east of Bagdad, and a resort of the higher classes from the heat of the capital. Here he meets with Abu Zayd, who is pursuing his calling of improvisatore and mendicant under various disguises, and enjoys for a long time his company and literary guidance. Abu Zayd, however, disappears, and Harith returns to his native place, Basra, where after a time he again meets Abu Zayd in the public library, among a crowd of dilettanti who are discussing the beauties of the popular poets. The admiration of one is especially excited by a line in which the teeth of a lady are compared to pearls and hailstones, and the white petals of a flower; and Abu Zayd instantly produces a number of comparisons in the same style, which give him a high place in the esteem of those present, when they are assured that he is really the author of them. They reward him, and the Assembly concludes by his reciting to Harith, who had recognized him, some lines on the fickleness of fortune. [17] Harith is in a circle of scholars, when a lame man makes his appearance, and after saluting them describes his former affluence and present penury in a very poetical and figurative style. Harith, perceiving his genius, and pitying his distress, offers him a denar on condition that he will improvise some lines in praise of it. This the lame man at once does, and on Harith offering him another denar on condition of his blaming it, he recites another composition in dispraise of money. Harith then recognizes in the lame man Abu Zayd, and rebukes him for his imposture. Abu Zayd defends himself in some new verses. The opening address of Abu Zayd is in imitation of a style said to be common among the Arabs of the desert.