Chestnuts, sorrels, red bays, whites, greys,
and jet-blacks, tethered to many posts,
whinney, play, snort and hammer at the soil.
Oh he rolls in it! What great lord of wealth!
He does what he wants, without thinking twice.’”
Then Hammadi 7l said:
“As for me, I do not hope to become a king,
nor to increase my present fortune.
I neither wish nor desire to bathe in opulence.
I vow to devote my gold
to seek the meaning of the symbols we have seen.
Aside from that, I have no other dream.
Some will find my wish foolish.
Others will find it lacking in ambition.
But as for me, I believe there is no greater goal
that a man can undertake on this earth.”
The three friends pushed on the oxen ahead of them,
laden with pure gold, incomparable and without equal.
The subterranean spirit took its leave,
the one Kaydara had sent to guide them away
and put them on the road leading back to the sons of Adam.
Behind them, they saw the country of the dwarfs fade in the distance.
The three friends felt as though they were in a boat.
It was as though a riverbank were slipping away.
Then the dwarf-country disappeared on the horizon.
It was as if the sky had become a screen
to hide the dwarf-village from men's sight.
Hammadi and his two friends arrived
at a large village with well-built houses.
They decided to camp there for three days.
They found that no stranger could go into the village,
just as with the pond, the fourth symbol of the country of the dwarfs.
The travelers did not know what to do.
They could not imagine what direction to go in.
The sun had run two-thirds of its course.
Soon darkness would fall
and night would creep with large steps
to catch the rich men by surprise,

Notes (Lilyan Kesteloot)
71. Thus, Hammadi remains the only one to possess the stuff of the initiate.