" So they all brought, one a
bullock, another a sack of meal, each according to his substance, and fed
the poor therewith; and said to them, "Behold our love and mercy towards
you!" But the more they gave, the less they had wherewithal to pay their
labourers; and the more they gave, the less the poor liked to work; so that
at last they had not wherewithal to pay for tilling the ground, and each
man had to go and till his own, and knew not how; so the land lay waste,
and there was great perplexity.
Then I went down to them and said, "If you had hearkened to me, and not
robbed your brethren of their land, you would never have come into this
strait; for by this time the mountain would have been bored through."
Then they cursed the mountain, and me, and Him who made them, and came down
to my cottage at night, and cried, "One-sided and left-handed! father of
confusion, and disciple of dead donkeys, see to what thou hast brought the
land, with thy blasphemous doctrines! Here we are starving, and not only
we, but the poor misguided victims of thy abominable notions!"
"You have become wondrous pitiful to the poor," said I, "since you found
that they would not starve that you might wanton.
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