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Abi Fressah thanked him cordially for his consideration, but his pain was intense when Ben Maslia insisted on giving him fullest particulars of all the dishes he would enjoy. "Yes, yes," Abi kept saying, but Ben Maslia stayed his interruptions. "Thy dwelling is far from the center of the city," Abi Fressah managed to say at last.
He seemed to wake up from a stupor when his host opened a door and exclaimed, "This is the feasting-chamber." A scene of splendor burst upon the eyes of Abi Fressah. He rubbed his hands in glee and was ready to forget and forgive the discomforts of the past few hours. The dining-room presented a magnificent appearance, with its gorgeous hangings, its many lamps, and its marble floor.
Then, thoroughly refreshed, the host said, "Now I will show thee the wonders and beauties of my domain." Abi Fressah was almost stupified with hunger, but he had to permit himself to be led through each room and to hear again the praises that had already been poured into his ears all the afternoon. Only the smell of the cooking fortified his spirit and enabled him to undergo the ordeal.
"I thought I would give thee ample rest," he said suavely. "Come, we must perform our ablutions." Abi Fressah would have preferred to have dispensed with this ceremony, but he could not offend his host by declining to conform to the custom of the period. Ben Maslia led the way to the bath-chamber, and there they spent quite an hour.
The liquid was bitter in the extreme, the taste it left in his mouth most horrid. "Now I know I have been hoodwinked," he screamed in rage, and he dashed toward the outer door. "Stay, stay what ails thee?" cried Ben Maslia. "Stop, stop," echoed the servants, as Abi Fressah commenced to run.
"I have no business of consequence to transact this afternoon. I could not pay thee a better compliment than to spend it examining thy treasures." "Of a certainty thou couldst not," assented the other, to his great glee. "Then let us proceed," said Abi Fressah. So they set out, Ben Maslia still continuing his glowing account of his wonderful house.
The cry was taken up in the street by those who saw a fat man panting along in the darkness, pursued by a number of servants. "Stop thief!" was the cry of one man in his excitement. The town guards heard, and without any ado they seized Abi Fressah and hauled him off to the jail. In vain he begged for mercy and struggled for freedom.
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