' So
he took the money and repairing to the market, bought meat and
rice and butter and so forth. When it was night, he lighted the
candled and said to Zubeideh, 'The dervishes have not brought the
ten thousand dinars that they promised me: but indeed they are
poor men.' As they were talking, the dervishes knocked at the
door and she said, 'Go down and open to them.' So he went down
and bringing them up, said to them, 'Have you brought me the ten
thousand dinars?' 'We have not been able to get aught thereof as
yet,' answered they, 'but fear nothing: to-morrow, God willing,
we will make an alchymic operation for thee. But now bid thy wife
play her best to us and gladden our hearts, for we love music.'
So she made them music, that would have caused the very rocks to
dance; and they passed the night in mirth and converse and good
cheer, till the morning appeared with its light and shone, when
they took leave of Alaeddin and went their way, after laying
other hundred dinars under the carpet. They continued to visit
him thus every night for nine nights, and each morning the Khalif
put a hundred dinars under the prayer-carpet, till the tenth
night, when they came not. Now the reason for their failure to
come was that the Khalif had sent to a great merchant, saying to
him, 'Bring me fifty loads of stuffs, such as come from Cairo,
each worth a thousand dinars, and write on each bale its price;
and bring me also a male Abyssinian slave.
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