take what little gold he still possessed and have a small casket made. He placed the pearl inside it, then laid the casket beneath his head. While he was asleep the snake crept up and bit him. He cried out in a loud voice, and his neighbors, his relatives, and his close friends came rushing to him. They surrounded him with reproaches for having failed to kill the snake. In reply he produced the casket, showed them what it contained, and tried to excuse the judgment in which they found him wanting. They said, “How little this will avail you today—now that it will pass to someone else!” The man died. His brothers, the very ones who had urged him to kill the snake, remarked, “May Allah cast him far away; he brought death upon himself, for we had advised him to kill the snake.”

I am truly amazed at people of intellect: they know full well the matter for which these parables are coined, yet they reap no benefit from that knowledge—as though they expect to be rewarded for recognizing the truth in speech while acting in contradiction to it.