HOW THE SULTAN GAVE TWO HUNDRED MARKS TO A MAN AND HOW HIS TREASURER
WROTE DOWN THE ENTRY IN HIS PRESENCE
Saladin [50] was a most noble lord, brave and generous. Once he gave
two hundred marks to a man who had given him a basket of winter roses
grown in a hot-house. His treasurer wrote down the sum in his presence,
and through a slip of the pen he wrote three hundred marks. Saladin
said: what are you doing? The treasurer answered: Sire, I have
blundered, and he was about to cancel the surplus. Then Saladin spoke:
do not cancel it; write four hundred instead. It would be ill for me
were your pen more generous than I.
This Saladin, at the time of his sultanate, ordered a truce between
himself and the Christians, and said he would like to behold our
customs, and if they pleased him, he would become a Christian.
The truce was made.
Saladin came in person to study the habits of the Christians; he beheld
the tables set for eating with dazzlingly white cloths, and he praised
them exceedingly.
And he beheld the disposition of the table where the King of France
ate, set apart from the others.
And he praised it highly. He saw the places where the great ones of the
realm ate, and he praised them highly.
He saw how the poor ate on the ground in humility, and this he
disapproved greatly.
Moreover, he blamed them for that the lord’s friends ate more lowly and
further down the table.
Then the Christians went to see the customs of the Saracens, and saw
that they ate on the ground grossly.
The Sultan had his pavilion, where they ate, richly draped and the
ground covered with carpets which were closely worked with crosses.
The stupid Christians entered, stepping with their feet on these
crosses and spitting upon them as on the ground.
Then the Sultan spoke and took them to task harshly: do you preach the
Cross and scorn it thus? It would seem then that you love your God only
with show of words and not with deeds. Your behaviour and your manners
do not meet with my liking.