Explore "Al-Bustán, or "the Orchard"" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When Mahmoud's nephews reappeared before him at the hour of public executions it was in a certain weariness of spirit; for though they knew that the fortunes of their uncle must subsequently be recovered in the narrative (since there he was before them, rolling, or, as the phrase went in Baghdad, "dripping" with it) yet the blows of fate had fallen upon him with such violence in the recent tale that something of his then despair had entered their own souls. They sat down therefore with hanging heads to listen, as they feared, to little better than the further advance of intolerable things.
The old man began in a subdued voice of lamentable recollection: