Dining Table

Masrur put his cup aside. He was torn between two feelings. Within himself he knew that a small fault would be able to scatter his gold everywhere. And in the end, there would be no one to celebrate it, perceive it as a virtue or even find someone to receive the crown of honor. He worried about little. He felt there was no real threat to his gold.

 

In fact he felt a deep sense of pride within himself. This pride was not because of his wealth nor because of the continuous increase of his wealth that exceeded eight million pounds of gold daily.

 

On more than one occasion he mentioned that his mind was actually the cause of his pride, his happiness and his misery too. He felt as if his wealth was hidden there, in a certain place deep

Within his consciousness. He had confidence in himself. This trust and satisfaction was attributed to his extraordinary ability to gain property and utilize it to its utmost potential. He also believed that this ability lay in the fact that he possessed certain knowledge within himself.

 

He used to count how much his property would increase in a day, a month and a year. Due to the fact that he possessed an excessive amount of money, he was unable to count all his capital. And this was the reason why he sometimes suffered from a haunting sense of failure and felt the narrowness of his empire.

 

Whenever he was alone, he lamented his inability to count h ` all his capital. He was fond of speaking to himself ironically about his poverty. To him, the rich man was the one who could

Count his property while the poor man was one of two: either he had no money and was an idiot who deserved to be burnt, or had some profit which was even greater than his ability to count. He

had never shared his perception - with others but kept it as a secret hidden within his heart.

 

Indeed, despite his wealth, he was a man who deserved sympathy and had a great need to be comforted, but at the same time he was not ready to have compassion for anybody.

 

Compassion and mercy may urge him to pay a penny for the poor, and thus, this penny would be the very beginning of loosing his property since million of pounds are nothing but an abundance of pennies. Then if he were to spend only one penny he would be threatening his wealth, the same as the string of a necklace that should it be torn, all its pearls, one after the other, would be scattered. He believed that each penny should be spent in a suitable way.

 

Masrur had paid eight million pounds of gold to buy some powder that was to be added to the wine of the king. Consequently, the king died while he was asleep. Thus, the millions of Masrur brought about his coronation. He became the king but without right or reason.