The Cogia, exerting all his might, pulled at the rope,
once, twice, but at the second pulling the rope snapped, and he fell upon
his back, and looking up into the heaven, saw the moon, whereupon he
exclaimed, 'O praise and glory, I have suffered much pain, but the moon
has got to its place again.'
One day the Cogia going into a person's garden climbed up into an apricot-
tree and began to eat the apricots. The master coming said, 'Cogia, what
are you doing here?' 'Dear me,' said the Cogia, 'don't you see that I am
a nightingale sitting in the apricot-tree?' Said the gardener, 'Let me
hear you sing.' The Cogia began to warble. Whereupon the other fell to
laughing, and said, 'Do you call that singing?' 'I am a Persian
nightingale,' said the Cogia, 'and Persian nightingales sing in this
manner.'
The Cogia, now with God, was master of all learning, and perfect in every
art. If some people should now say, 'We were in hope of receiving
instruction from his sayings, but have read nothing but the ravings of
madness'; and if they should require some other book of his utterances,
we must tell them that he uttered nothing beyond what is noted here. Some
people say that, whilst uttering what seemed madness, he was, in reality,
divinely inspired, and that it was not madness but wisdom that he
uttered.
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