'Six hundred,' cried an old man named
Reshideddin, blue-eyed and foul of face. 'And ten,' quoth
another. 'I bid a thousand,' rejoined Reshideddin; whereupon the
other merchants were silent and the broker took counsel with the
girl's owner, who said, 'I have sworn not to sell her save to
whom she shall choose; consult her.' So the broker went up to
Zumurrud and said to her, 'O mistress of moons, yonder merchant
hath a mind to buy thee.' She looked as Reshideddin and finding
him as we have said, replied, 'I will not be sold to a grey-
beard, whom decrepitude hath brought to evil plight.' 'Bravo,'
quoth I, 'for one who saith:
I asked her for a kiss one day, but she my hoary head Saw, though
of wealth and worldly good I had great plentihead;
So, with a proud and flouting air, her back she turned on me And,
"No, by Him who fashioned men from nothingness!" she said.
"Now, by God's truth, I never had a mind to hoary hairs, And
shall my mouth be stuffed, forsooth, with cotton, ere I'm
dead?"
'By Allah,' quoth the broker, 'thou art excusable, and thy value
is ten thousand dinars!' So he told her owner that she would not
accept of Reshideddin, and he said, 'Ask her of another.
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