CHAPTER X.

BAHRAM IS LONG LOVE-SICK, BUT BY THE HELP OF TWO SYMPATHISING FAIRY DAMSELS IS FINALLY UNITED TO THE BEAUTIFUL RUH-AFZA, AND ALL ENDS HAPPILY.

Meanwhile Bahrám became thinner and thinner every day; but Saman-rú alone knew the cause. She was constantly advising him to chase away from his heart that love for a person of another race, which could only render him unhappy. “The example,” said she, “of the perfect union which exists between Táj ul-Mulúk and Bakáwalí should not lead you astray. It is a happy exception. But it is contrary to the nature of things for a human being to join himself to one of etherial substance.” These words made no impression on the mind of Bahrám, and when she saw that the thorn of love had pierced so deeply into his heart that it was hopeless to attempt its extraction, she declared that all she could do was to conduct him to Firdaus. Bahrám eagerly accepted this offer, and Saman-rú then clothed him in women’s apparel, which suited him well, as he was yet beardless, and carried him through the air to Firdaus, to the house of her sister, called Banafshá,[218] who was hair-dresser to Rúh-afzá. The latter was delighted at seeing Saman-rú, and at once asked who was the young lady whom she had brought with her. “She is one of my friends,” said she, “who desires to see this country. I have taken the liberty of bringing her to you, in hopes that you will be so good as to show her all the sights.” “Certainly,” said Banafshá; “I am willing to do anything that might please you.” After this Saman-rú returned to Bakáwalí, and Bahrám remained in the house of Banafshá, who showed her every kindness, led her each day into a different garden, and pointed out everything worth seeing; in the evening she discharged her duties as hair-dresser to Rúh-afzá.

One evening Banafshá presented Bahrám to her young mistress, as a friend of Saman-rú. She at once recognised Bahrám, in spite of his disguise, but dissembled so well that he believed she did not know him. She induced Banafshá to leave the young person with her. Therefore she withdrew and Bahrám remained with his mistress. And when the Eternal Designer of the affairs of this world had illumed the earth with the clear light of the moon, Rúh-afzá led Bahrám into her private chamber, and said: “What is your name, madam?” He replied: “I have had no name for a long time: I only know yours.” “Why have you come here?” “Ask the taper: it will tell you why the moth throws itself into the flame.” These pleasant words gratified Rúh-afzá, but, affecting a severe countenance, she said: “You are deceiving me; for I observe from your words that you are not a woman. You have entered here by false pretences, and have thus exposed my honour to the wind. Say, yourself, what punishment does such hardihood deserve?” Poor Bahrám, who was quite ignorant of the artifices of coquetry, and remembered the hard blows of his mistress on a former occasion, thought that she was about to strike him again and drive him from her presence. He trembled through fear and repeated these verses:

“Kill me; for better ’tis to die before Thy sight, than live to suffer more and more.”

Then he fell down quite unconscious, and Rúh-afzá, not being able to carry her feigned severity farther, ran up to him, put his head on her knees, showered kisses on him, and by the sweet perfume of her breath brought back his senses.

When Bahrám opened his eyes he perceived that he had assumed the _rôle_ of the Rose and Rúh-afzá that of the Nightingale.[219] Soon did he forget his former vexations. Rúh-afzá, who was violently in love with him, did not wish him to leave her, so to conceal him from the looks of the malicious she fastened round his neck a talisman which changed him into a bird.[220] In this form she kept him in a golden cage, which was hung up before her eyes during the day, but at night she caused him to come out, and restored him to his proper shape. This continued for some time; but, as the Hindú proverb says, “love and musk cannot be long hidden”; and Husn-árá began to suspect that all was not as it should be with her daughter. One morning, at daybreak, she went to her daughter’s chamber, and beating her, exclaimed: “You have drowned yourself in a vase full of water! You are lost to all shame! You have disgraced the name of your father! Let me at least know the name of your audacious accomplice, else I will strangle you with my own hands!” These violent words caused Rúh-afzá to tremble. “Dispel, my dear mother,” said she, “your vain dream. I have never seen a mortal but at a distance. Should a kind mother believe the gossiping reports of strangers?” But in spite of her most vehement protestations, her mother believed her not; she insisted that the ravisher who was in the house should be seized and punished as he deserved. By her order cunning spies were employed to search for Bahrám—in the earth, the air, and the sea, but without success: they were all ignorant of the secret of the golden cage.[221] Husn-árá, despairing at the failure of her spies, scolded her daughter’s maids, and threatened them with the wrath of Muzaffar Sháh; whereupon one of them, called Gul-rukh,[222] pointed out the mysterious cage, saying that she had often observed Rúh-afzá, both night and day, caressing the dove which was shut up in it;—might it not be surmised that there was some secret in that circumstance? Immediately Husn-árá proceeded to her daughter’s chamber and seized hold of the cage. Rúh-afzá, with horror and dismay, saw her beloved bird in the talons of the falcon; but, trembling for herself, she dared not utter a word, still less could she snatch it out of the hands of the fowler of destiny. Husn-árá carried the cage to her husband, who drew out the bird, and felt its wings and all its feathers to see if he could discover any talisman. At last he found what was on the bird’s neck, and on removing it, Bahrám appeared before him in his natural form. The attendants were greatly astonished, and Muzaffar Sháh, wild with passion, said to Bahrám: “Wicked wretch! fear you not my anger? Death alone can punish thy audacity!” “Sire,” replied Bahrám, “I fear not death; but I shall deeply regret my beloved mistress in leaving life; and even in my grave a stream of blood will flow from my eyes.”[223] The anger of Muzaffar Sháh, far from being appeased by these words, increased to such a height that he gave orders to his people to go outside the city and throw Bahrám into the fire, so that he should be reduced to ashes.

By good fortune, Táj ul-Mulúk and Bakáwalí were at that moment walking together in the garden of Iram, and as they were not far from Jazína-Firdaus, they determined to visit Rúh-afzá. On going thither they passed the very spot where Bahrám was about to be burnt. He was already on the fatal pyre, with the flames surrounding him. Bakáwalí, seeing the pyre and the great crowd around it, ordered her chariot to draw near and cried out: “Extinguish the fire and bring that young man to me. I shall cause a thousand of you to be put to death, if you do not—ay, and raze all your houses to the ground!” These threats greatly disconcerted the officials, so they put out the fire and led Bahrám before the princess, who made him enter her chariot, and conducted him into a quiet garden, where leaving him with Táj ul-Mulúk, she then proceeded to visit Muzaffar Sháh and Husn-árá, who received her with the greatest kindness, and after embracing her, inquired the occasion of her visit. “It is mere chance,” said she, “which brings me to you; but I have seen on my way hither an incident which caused me great pain: some of your people were about to burn the son of my father-in-law’s vazír, and, but for my interference, he would ere this have been reduced to ashes. Why did you dream of giving such instructions? Would his death change anything that has occurred? Would it efface the _tika_[224] of slander? Supposing a hundred persons already know of the adventure of Rúh-afzá, presently it will be known to thousands. What you should rather do is pardon Bahrám his fault, and marry him to your daughter; for he is full of spirit and of a handsome appearance. If you despise human nature so much, why did you marry me to Táj ul-Mulúk? Is there any difference between your daughter and me?”

Muzaffar Sháh bent his head on hearing this remonstrance, and said he would think over it. Then Bakáwalí went in search of Rúh-afzá and found her in tears; but patting her on the head she said smilingly: “You have cried enough; wash yourself, change your dress, and come forth from your cell. I have brought back your lover, safe and sound, and hope that you will soon be married.” Rúh-afzá thanked Bakáwalí and embraced her most affectionately, and the cousins remained together all night.[225] On the morrow Bakáwalí led Rúh-afzá before her parents to be reconciled to them, after which she set out with Táj ul-Mulúk and Bahrám for Jazíra-i Iram. She related to her father and mother the story of Rúh-afzá and Bahrám, and persuaded them to do for the latter, without loss of time, what her uncle had done for Táj ul-Mulúk. They agreed, and, having clothed Bahrám in royal robes, proceeded in great state to Firdaus, where suitable arrangements had been made to receive the marriage procession, which soon arrived at the palace of Muzaffar Sháh. The wedding guests were conducted into the reception room, where dance and music continued the whole night. After the ceremony of the collar and betel, they brought the bridegroom into the interior of the palace, in order to accomplish the formalities which still remained to be performed. Bakáwalí behaved towards Bahrám as though she had been his sister. She held for him the Kurán and the looking-glass, and made him drink the cup half-emptied by Rúh-afzá.[226] When all these ceremonies had been performed, Muzaffar Sháh and Husn-árá gave to their daughter, on the day of separation, a considerable dowry, great quantity of ready money as well as jewels and slaves. Fírúz Sháh and Táj ul-Mulúk at the head of the nuptial procession returned to Jazír-i Iram, where they continued the festive rejoicings for several days, after which Bakáwalí and her devoted husband conducted Bahrám and his bride in great splendour to Mulk-i Nighárín. The father and mother of Bahrám were overjoyed at the sight of their beloved son, and warmly expressed their gratitude to Bakáwalí, who had brought him such great good fortune. To celebrate the marriage of his son, the vazír gave a grand banquet, to which great and small were alike invited, and even the king himself honoured it with his presence. The festival continued for several days. Everybody received presents; money was distributed in abundance—all were delighted. After the king had been escorted back to his palace and all the guests had retired to their homes, Bakáwalí summoned Hammála, and ordered her to transport her palace to that spot, which was soon accomplished, when she presented it to Rúh-afzá and Bahrám for their residence. Thus terminated the adventures of these lovers: each was content and happy.

MAY GOD GRANT TO EACH OF US THE LIKE FAVOUR!

PERSIAN STORIES.

PERSIAN STORIES.

THE THREE DECEITFUL WOMEN.

Once on a time there were three whales of the sea of fraud and deceit—three dragons of the nature of thunder and the quickness of lightning—three defamers of honour and reputation—in other words, three men-deceiving, lascivious women, each of whom had, from the chancery of her cunning, issued the diploma of turmoil to a hundred cities and countries, and in the arts of fraud they accounted Satan as an admiring spectator in the theatre of their stratagems. One of them was sitting in the court of justice of the Kází’s embraces; the second was the precious gem of the bazár-master’s diadem of compliance; and the third was the beazle and ornament of the signet-ring of the life and soul of the superintendent of police. They were constantly entrapping the fawns of the prairie of deceit, with the grasp of cunning, and plundering the wares of the caravan of tranquility of the hearts of both strangers and acquaintances by means of the edge of the scimitar of fraud.[227]

One day this trefoil of roguery met at the public bath, and, according to their homogeneous nature, they intermingled as intimately as a comb with the hair: they tucked up the garment of amity to the waist of union, entered the tank of agreement, seated themselves in the hot-house of love, and poured from the dish of folly, by means of the key of hypocrisy, the water of profusion upon the head of intercourse; they rubbed with the brush of familiarity and the soap of affection the stains of jealousies from each other’s limbs. After a while, when they had brought the pot of concord to boil by the fire of mutual laudation, they warmed the bath of association with the breeze of kindness and came out.[228] In the dressing-room all three of them happened simultaneously to find a ring, the gem of which surpassed the imagination of the Jeweller of Destiny,[229] and the like of which he had never beheld in the store-house of possibility. The finger of covetousness of each of the three ladies pointed to the ring, and the right of its possession became the object of dispute among them. But after their controversy had been protracted to an undue length, the mother of the bathman,[230] who had for years practised under the sorceress Shamsah[231] and had learnt all sorts of tricks from her, stepped forward and said: “I am a woman who has seen the world, and I have experienced many events of this kind. Something has occurred to me with reference to this matter, and if you will listen to my advice your difficulty will be solved. As I am a faithful and honest person,” the old woman continued, “you may entrust this ring to me. Each of you must sow the seed of deception into the field of her husband’s folly, and she whose arrow of fraud shall settle deepest in the target of her husband’s imbecility, and the rose of whose act, being watered by the art and care of diligence, shall flourish more than the plants of her competitors, shall, after due investigation by myself, be put in possession of the much-coveted ring.” All three of them agreed to this proposal, and surrendered the ring to the old hag. The wife of the Kází said: “I shall be the first who writes the incantation upon the name of the Kází.” Accordingly they dressed in the robe of cunning, put on the mantle of deception, and departed to their respective domiciles.

_The Trick of the Kází’s Wife._

In the first place, the wife of the Kází sat down in the court of meditation and arrangement, and having for the purpose of solving this problem opened the directory of falsehood, she perused it with great diligence, scanning it from paragraph to paragraph, from the preface to the conclusion. It so happened that a carpenter who was the Kází’s neighbour had long paid attentions to the wife of the latter. He chopped the tablet of his heart with the axe of uneasiness, and scratched the board of his body with the plane of lamentation; he was in constant motion like a saw, and though all his limbs were like a grating turned into eyes, and he was sitting on the chair of expectation, he was not able to attain his object; so that the hatchet of longing and burning felled the palm-tree of his patience and equanimity, and his heart was perforated by the auger of this grief. As the wife of the Kází was aware of the sufferings of the carpenter, she called her confidential slave-girl and said to her: “O thou Violet[232] of the garden of harmony, the flower of whose body I have so long cherished in the parterre of education! I have a little business which I mean to discharge this day by the aid of thy intimacy. If thou wilt accomplish it cheerfully, I shall ransom thee with my own money, and rejoice thy heart with various gifts.” The girl replied: “Whatever my mistress orders, it is my duty to perform.” The wife of the Kází said: “Go, unobserved by any one, to the carpenter and tell him that the flame of his love has taken effect on my heart; that I am aware of his having suffered torments on account of my unkindness; and that on the day of resurrection I shall have to answer for the sufferings I have caused to him: I am quite embarrassed in this matter, and, in order to remove this awful responsibility, I am prepared now to make good my past transgressions, and to meet him if he will dig an underground passage between this house and his own, so that we may be enabled to pluck the roses of mutual love whenever we choose, and communicate freely by means of this passage.” The maid went to the carpenter, and caused by the nectar of her eloquence this message to bloom in his garden of hope. He presented the girl with a thousand dínars[233] and said:

“I would ransom thee with my life, O idol of the garden of purity! I shall gird my loins for thy service In a hundred thousand places.

It is a lifetime since I began to burn on the thread of exclusion and separation, and put the collyrium of longing into the eye of desire to behold that paragon of the world.

Melancholy for thee inspires my breast; Desire for thee permeates my heart! Thy behests I shall never disobey; Thy will I shall follow with my soul.”

The carpenter dug a spacious passage between the two houses, and the lady arrived by means of it in her lover’s domicile. When the carpenter beheld the Jacob’s house of mourning of his heart illuminated by the Joseph’s lamp of the coveted interview, he said:

“Welcome, my faithful idol! My hut is the envy of Paradise. Come, moon-like mistress, come! Come, tender sweetheart, come! Thy elegant speech is coquetry; Thy gait is graceful as the rose: Thou art the cynosure of love! Thou art the model of tenderness!”

After mutual congratulations and compliments, that title-page of the ledger of amorous intrigues said to the carpenter: “To-morrow I shall come here, and you must bring the Kází to marry me to you.” When the lady had explained the particulars of this matter to him, he drew the hand of obedience over the eyes of compliance; and when on the next day the kází of the morn placed the seal of brilliancy upon the volume of the firmament, and the shaykh-sun seated himself upon the carpet of the Orient and manifested himself by the consequence of light and brightness, the Kází hastened from his haram to the court of justice. His tender mistress, however, betook herself to the house of the carpenter, who forgot the grief of separation, dressed himself in gaudy clothes, and waiting on the Kází said: “O spreader of the superficies of the law, and strengthener of the pillars of the affairs of mankind,

No matter in this world can be Arranged without thy intervention.”

When the Kází perceived from this allocution that the carpenter came on business, and concluded that it might be something profitable, he replied: “Greeting to you! And may the mercy of God be upon your fathers and ancestors, fortunate and blessed man! Welcome! Rest yourself awhile; smoke tobacco and drink coffee, whilst you are acquainting me with your intentions.” The carpenter said: “O Kází, I am a bridegroom and am very restless to-day on that account: my bride is sitting in the house. As the moon is this day in the first mansion of the Balance, and in the two hours and nine minutes that are elapsing of the day it has a triangular aspect with the sun, a hexagonal one with Jupiter, is in opposition to Mercury, out of the influence of the Scorpion and the remaining ill-boding influences, therefore I am of good cheer; and as the hour to tie the matrimonial knot is quite propitious, I request your lordship quickly to perform the ceremony.”[234]

As soon as the Kází heard about a wedding, he put the turban of covetousness on his head, took the rosary of thanksgivings into his hand, and went with the carpenter to the house of the latter. When he entered he exclaimed: “Open, O opener of portals!” but when his eyes alighted on the bride and he recognised in her the mistress of his own haram, a thousand suspicions beset him; nevertheless he composed himself as well as he was able, but could not help thinking: “This is a very wonderful business; and I have never seen two persons resembling each other so much.” While he thus plunged the pen of his mind into the inkstand of meditation and amazement, the carpenter exclaimed: “My lord, the time is passing, and what is the use of delaying?” The Kází looked up, and again scrutinised the lady, but found no difference between her and his wife, so he cried: “Praise be to God! There is no power nor strength but by his will!” Then putting his hand to his breast he said: “What memory is this?” and arose from his place. The carpenter asked: “O Kází, where are you going?” The Kází replied: “My good fellow, my ‘Key of prosperity’ has been left in the house, and there is a prayer in it that must be recited before pronouncing the matrimonial formula, in order to procure the mutual enjoyment of the newly married couple.” Accordingly he went to the house, but was forestalled by his spouse, who entered it through the secret passage and lay down on her bed. When the Kází arrived and saw his wife in this position he said: “I ask pardon of God from all that displeases him in words, deeds, thoughts, or intentions! To what a strange suspicion have I given way! May God forgive me!” His wife, on hearing these exclamations, yawned and turned from one side to the other, and said: “Violet, did I not tell you to allow no one to enter this room, so that I might repose for a time?” Quoth the Kází: “Beloved partner! there is no stranger. Excuse me, and pardon me for having harboured evil suspicions concerning thee.” The wife replied: “Perhaps you have become mad!”

The Kází again returned to the carpenter’s house, but his wife had preceded him and was sitting in her former place. As soon as he looked at her the same suspicions overwhelmed him, and he exclaimed in amazement: “O Lord of glory! I have fallen into a strange predicament, and am, as it were, between two screws of the horns of a dilemma that presses me, on the one hand, quickly to perform the ceremony, and, on the other hand, rather to defer it.” Then said the carpenter: “My lord Kází, I see you despondent and hesitating in this business; and although you ought not to expect anything from me because I am your neighbour, yet I will give you these thousand dínars to hasten your proceedings, because the time is elapsing.” No sooner did the Kází see the money than he put it at once into his pocket and began: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Clement,” and continued to read the matrimonial formula till he arrived at the words, “I marry,” when he perceived a black mole on the corner of his wife’s lip, which he had so often kissed. He felt uneasy, and the sugar of the thousand dínars was bitter in the palate of his greediness, he again lowered his head into the collar of meditation and said within himself: “O assembly of genii and men! are you able to withdraw yourselves from the precincts of heaven and earth?” The carpenter exclaimed: “O Kází, I really do not know the reason of your delay, nor from the fountain of what pretence the water of this procrastination is gushing.” The Kází smiled and thus replied: “O carpenter, we are the sureties of legal affairs, the successors of the prophets, and the pontiffs of the laws and canons of the ways of guidance. In every affair that we perform we must attentively consider a thousand subtleties, lest we should become liable to blame in the next world by the commission of a fault. Why are you in such haste? All affairs in this world succeed only by civility and patience, and not by confusion and impatience. Thou resemblest that shepherd who was one day engaged in pasturing his flock and became very thirsty. As a village was very near, he left his sheep and entered it to look for water. He happened to pass near a tree under the shadow of which a schoolmaster was teaching a crowd of boys. After looking for a while, he perceived the teacher reposing and issuing orders, and the boys humbly obeying him in all things and occupied in melodiously rehearsing their lessons. This sort of employment disgusted the shepherd with his own calling, and he thought: ‘While I am able to learn this trade, I do not see why I should spend my whole life to no profit by running about the fields with a lot of sheep. I must change the profession of a shepherd for that of a schoolmaster, and then I shall spend my days in comfort, like this man.’ Accordingly he stepped forward and said: ‘My good master, I have a great inclination to learn your business; please instruct me in it.’ When the master looked at the figure and aspect of the shepherd, he was astonished, and saw he was an ignorant fellow who had no capacity. For the sake of fun, however, he took a piece of paper, wrote the alphabet on it, and said to the man: ‘Be seated, and read this.’ The shepherd asked: ‘Why do you not teach me from these large books?’ Said the master: ‘You are but a beginner, and you cannot read books till you have learned the alphabet.’ Quoth the shepherd: ‘Master, what letters are you speaking about? Please fill me with them now, for my flock roams about without a shepherd, and I have no time to sit down and learn the alphabet.’ The schoolmaster smiled at this and drove the shepherd away. O carpenter,” continued the Kází, “do not fancy every business to be easy. Now I meditate and study how to divide the possessions of a certain wealthy man, who died yesterday, among thirty-two men who have inherited them. This has just occurred to my mind, and I was engaged in multiplication and division.” Then the Kází again glanced at the lady, and beginning to feel uneasy arose once more. The carpenter asked: “O Kází, what fancy is moving you now, and causes you to look so confused?” Said the Kází: “This transaction is one of the greatest importance according to the religious law. It cannot be performed unless after the general ablution, about the completeness of which a doubt has just arisen in my mind; therefore I must return to my house and renew it.” The carpenter answered: “You can wash yourself here.” Quoth the Kází: “No, by God! I never perform my ablutions with water which I have not seen before, and I have all the arrangements for purification in my house.”

The Kází returned to his house accordingly, but his wife went before him through the passage, and was reading a book when he entered her room. He exclaimed: “I ask forgiveness from God, and I repent of all my sins and transgressions.” The lady looked at him in astonishment, and said: “This day I perceive the neck of your intellect confined in the halter of a lunatic fit. How many times have you come and again gone away after holding a soliloquy as madmen are wont to do! If you have become subject to such a distemper, and do not take the proper steps to cure it, I shall not be your nurse.” Said the Kází: “O Bilkís[235] of the compact of prudence and innocence, to-day I have indulged in a suspicion regarding thee: I have made a mistake—forgive me!” The wife answered: “The worst people in the world are those who indulge in evil imputations, and those of yours must be expiated.” She then gave a few dínars to Violet, bidding her distribute them among the poor as a penitential expiation. After this the Kází took an apple from his pocket, cut it in twain, and gave one moiety to his wife, saying: “Though apples have many qualities, the chief of them is to increase conjugal love: I intend to go to the bath.”

Putting the other half of the apple in his pocket, the Kází returned to the house of the carpenter. His wife preceded him as usual, and sat down in her place. When he drew near he saw the half of the apple in her hand, and was greatly amazed, but said nothing, for fear of offending the carpenter, who cried out: “O Kází, tell me for God’s sake what you have to say, and why is all this going and coming and all this delay? If this affair is disagreeable to you, I shall bring Shaykh Jahtás, or Mullah Allam-Abhuda, the servant of the college, to perform the matrimonial ceremony. O Kází, I expected more kindness from you as a neighbour. This business is not worth so much haggling about, and if you wish more than the thousand, take these five hundred dínars.” When the Kází saw this additional sum of money he was overpowered by covetousness and exclaimed: “I take refuge with God from the lapidated Satan![236] I marry and couple!” Then his eye again alighted on the countenance of his wife and he saw she wore the ruby necklace which he had bought for three thousand dínars. He shook his head and said: “Every now and then I must somehow stop: I do not know what is again distracting my attention,” and he glanced once more at his wife. Quoth the carpenter: “O Kází, your amorous looks have convinced me that your desires are centred in the possession of this lady, for your eyes constantly wander over her countenance. If this be the case, do not make a secret of it, that we may consult her opinion on the matter.” The Kází thought within himself, that, as the carpenter was an ignorant and illiterate man, he might play a trick on him, and recite something else instead of the marriage formula, so that, if his suspicions proved to be well-founded, he might be able to annul the marriage. So he sat down on his haunches and recited: “Iazghára, Iajargára Aftanys Salanká, Dáma Talkuvára,” etc. Then he spoke to the carpenter: “Say, ‘I agree.’” But as the carpenter had frequently heard the marriage formula, he answered: “Kází, this is a formula read to country fellows and retainers. I have given thee one thousand five hundred dínars to marry me like one of the grandees. I am not a child to be thus played with: this formula is not worth twenty dínars. Either return me the money or recite the proper manly formula.” Quoth the Kází: “You are but a working man, carpenter, why then do you entertain such high pretensions? I have just now read to you the formula which I made use of in marrying Mullah Abdullah, the householder in the market, yet you want a formula used for grandees, scholars, and judges, and to give me a headache!” The carpenter replied: “I also covet science and distinction.” Said the Kází: “How will you convince me of that?” The carpenter continued: “I know the story of the ‘Sun and Moon.’[237] I have heard the tale of ‘Sayf ul-Mulúk and Badya’á ul-Jumál.’ I have likewise seen ‘The Road to the Mosque.’ My father used to pass once every day near the school-house of Mullah Namatullah Kylak.” Said the Kází: “There is no science or perfection higher than this. I did not know the degree or limit which thou hast attained.”[238] In consequence of this irony of the Kází, the carpenter put a feather in his bonnet[239] and said: “There is no excuse.” Once more the Kází attempted to begin the formula, but when he looked at the half of the apple that was in the lady’s hand, he cried: “Woman, give me that half-apple!” She complied, and the Kází took the other half from his pocket, and by placing the two halves together he found them to fit exactly. The carpenter exclaimed: “Kází, apparently some jugglery is going on here! What delusion are you subject to every moment?” The Kází replied: “I have done this simply to produce conjugal love between you.” Then he again rose and wanted to go to his house for the purpose of verifying his surmises, but the lady turned to the carpenter and said: “Foolish man, hast thou brought me here to marry me, or to make a laughing-stock of me? I have never before seen such proceedings. I think his eyes have become subject to [the disease called] pearl-water.” The Kází took no notice of these remarks, but hastened to his house, where his wife met him with these words: “O Kází, thou resemblest those people who have the pearl-water in their eyes.” Said he: “There is no God but _the_ God! The other woman has spoken the same thing. Tell me at all events what is the distemper called pearl-water.” His wife answered: “Pearl-water is a humour caused by heavy particles in the stomach rising into the head, and from thence descending into the eyelids, which injures the eyes, so that different persons appear to be the same, and cannot be distinguished from each other. If this malady is not cured it degenerates into blindness.” Quoth the Kází: “Perhaps this is because I have not kept my depraved appetite in subjection. Several days ago I was with the superintendent of police in the house of Kávas the Armenian, who had died; we went there to take an inventory of his goods and chattels for the Amír. The children of Khoja Kávas had, by way of a sweetmeat, something baked in hog’s blood; as I was hungry and this food happened to be delicious, I ate somewhat freely of it; and as it had been prepared from the property of the deceased man, it may possibly have had its consequences.”[240]

A third time the Kází returned to the carpenter’s house, and when he beheld his wife, and glanced stealthily at her, the lady was wroth and said to the carpenter: “This fellow is every now and then casting amorous glances at me, and through my connection with thee I have lost my reputation. Either drive him away or forfeit my company.” Quoth the Kází: “Respectable virgin and honourable lady, in all matters consideration is useful.” The carpenter lost his patience and exclaimed: “You have nearly killed me with your folly and loquacity. I do not wish any longer for marriage. If thou hast considered this woman worthy of thy haram, why hast thou for so long a time been undecided?” Whilst the carpenter was thus talking, they heard the voice of the muezzin, and he exclaimed: “Alas, it is noon[241]—the propitious hour has elapsed!” Said the Kází: “You are a carpenter; you know how to handle the saw and the axe, to make windows and doors. But what idea have you of the rotation of the spheres—about good and bad stars and hours? This science belongs to our profession.” Then taking an almanac from his pocket and opening it, he said: “The moon is a luminary of quick motion. Yesterday she entered the sign of the Balance, but has so quickly travelled through the degrees that she feels tired to-day and is still reposing, and will not travel to-morrow. From hour to hour till to-morrow, inclusive, wedding dinners and other feasts are propitious. I shall now go to my house and prepare a medicine for the pearl-water of my eyes, as it will probably hinder me from studying.” But the carpenter and the lady seized the Kází, one on either side, and said: “Mayhap the affairs of this world are only a play! By Allah, we shall not let thee go ere thou hast tied the matrimonial knot.” Quoth the Kází: “Let me go, else I shall immediately write a mandate for the capital punishment of both of you.” They rejoined: “May the columns of the house of Khoja Ratyl, the merchant, fall upon you, if you do us the least harm!” Upon this the Kází turned his face upwards and prayed: “O Judge of the court of justice of destiny, protect me from the evil of all mad persons and from all malefactors, and grant me health and peace! Thou judgest—thou art the sovereign Judge!” As he had no alternative now but to marry the lady to the carpenter, and as at that time it was customary for the bride to kiss the hand of the Kází after the termination of the ceremony, the lady stepped forward for this purpose; but the Kází was so anxious to mark his wife for identification afterwards, that he struck her such a blow on the cheek with his clenched hand as to cause her to bleed profusely. Then he ran into his own house, where he found his wife disfiguring her face and crying out: “I renounce such an adulterous husband, who is carrying on an intrigue with the carpenter’s wife.” She and her maids then took him by the throat and pulled off his turban, and he fled into the street. The carpenter, who had heard the noise, came out, and seeing him with his head uncovered placed his own turban on it, and said: “O Kází, women are of an imperfect understanding, and quarrels between husbands and wives have taken place at all times. If you have lost your senses, this can easily be remedied by taking up your lodging for a few days in a madhouse, until your spouse repents of her deed.” And so the Kází went to repose himself in a lunatic asylum.

* * * * *

The secret-knowing bulbul of the musical-hall of narratives, namely, the pen, thus continues its melody: After the wife of the Kází had severed the robe of his conjugal authority with the scissors of deceit, she again stitched it with the needle of fraud, and invested with it the bosom of the wretched Kází’s imbecility by means of the above-narrated tricks. Then she sent word to her two accomplices, that she had drawn the bow of machination to its utmost extent by the exertion of her skill, that she had with the arrow thereof hit the target of the conditions stipulated, and that now the field was free to them for the display of their cunning.

_The Trick of the Bazár-Master’s Wife._

The blandly-ambling pea-fowl of the pen continues the narrative as follows: Now it was the turn of the bazár-master’s wife, whose tricks were of a kind to instruct Iblís in the laws of deceit and fraud.[242] She began to weigh all kinds of stratagems in the balance of meditation, to enable her to decide what course of roguery would be best for her object. She happened to have a nurse who had also attained the highest degree of intrigue by the instigations of Iblís, and was her assistant in all her devices; so calling this woman, and anointing with the balsam of flattery the limbs of her attachment, she said: “O beloved and kind mother, the ornaments and pictures of my house of fraud and cunning are the offspring of thy instructions. It is long since the bond of amity was torn between me and my husband. In spite of all my endeavours, I am unable to cope with his sagacity; but I trust in thy affection, and hope that we shall be able to arrange this matter by thy assistance.” The nurse answered: “Ornament of the tribe of the lovely!

My soul is longing and my eyes waiting, Both to be sacrificed at thy behest.

As long as the child of the spirit remains in the cradle of my body, and the milk of motion and rest circulates in the members of it, I cannot avoid obeying thy commands. I sincerely comply with all thy orders.” Then said the wife of the bazár-master: “As I was one day coming from the bath, the son of a banker was walking in the lane. And when the smoke of the torch of my tenderness reached his nostrils, he fell from the courser of the intellect upon the ground of insensibility and followed me everywhere with groans and sighs; but the vanity of seeing myself beloved allowed me not to sprinkle the rose-water of a glance upon the face of his expectation. When he arrived at the door of my house, he sobbed, and then went away. I know that the bird of his heart is captivated by the pursuit after the grain of this phantom, and is imprisoned in the meshes of exclusion. I want thee to go to him and convey to him the following message: ‘From that day when the chamberlain of carelessness hindered me from admitting thee to the intimacy of an interview, I dreamed every night fearful dreams, and am to this day at all times so much plunged into the drowning waters of uneasiness, that it has become plain to me that all this is the consequence of thy disappointment and exclusion. Now I wish to remedy my incivility by promenading a little in the gardens of thy love and attachment. As the bazár-master will be engaged till the morning in some business, the house will not be encumbered by his presence. So put on a woman’s veil, bring wine and the requisites for amusement, and come hither, that we may sweeten our palates with the honey of meeting each other.’”

After the lady had despatched her nurse to the banker’s son, the bazár-master arrived, and his wife thus addressed him: “Beloved husband, to-morrow, one of the principal ladies of the town, whose acquaintance I have made at the bath, will come to me on a visit. As it is for my interest to receive her with all possible courtesy, you must remain in the town-hall to-morrow until evening. Send in the supplies required for a handsome entertainment, and please to arrange all in such a manner as we shall not reap shame from anything.” The bazár-master lighted the lamp of acquiescence in the assembly of compliance and said: “Let it be so.”

When the banker of morn sat down in the shop of the horizon, and when the unalloyed gold of the sun stamped in the mint of creation with the legend of brilliancy, and the light began to ascend towards the meridian of the sphere, the son of the banker put on costly garments, perfumed himself, and threw over his clothes a large veil, and taking under it a flask of ruby-coloured wine, proceeded with a thousand joyful expectations to the mansion of his mistress, who had, like the crescent moon on a festive eve, gone to meet him with open arms as far as the vestibule of the house, saying:

“To-day my moon visits me with joy, And renews the covenant of love with his light.

Thou art welcome! For the rays of thy sun-like countenance have made my humble cottage the object of jealousy of the palaces of Europe, and delightful, like Paradise!

Come! For without thee I cannot endure life: The eyelids of my repose meet not sleep without thee. I wish not for the water of immortality through Khizr: Thy cheeks are not less to me than immortality.”

The lady took him into the interior apartments, divested him of the veil, threw the hand of amity over the neck of his affection, begged his pardon for her past offence, entangled with kindness the feet of his heart in the stirrup-leathers of hope, then entirely undressed him, and said: “Rest thyself comfortably in this secret apartment until I go and bring the requisites for company and music, when we shall enjoy ourselves.” She went out and said to her female attendants: “When I go in again, you must call the bazár-master into the house and say: ‘Our lady has brought a strange man, with whom she is amusing herself and drinking wine.’” Then she returned to the young man and kept him company. In the meantime her husband was informed of what was going on in his house, and becoming greatly excited, sent in a servant to inquire. The lady said to the youth, in seeming perplexity: “This coming of my husband is not without a cause—perhaps he has a notion that you are here.” The youth, trembling with terror, said: “Alas, I shall lose my life through this affair; for the bazár-master is jealous, and will injure me.” Then the lady opened a chest and said to the young man: “Conceal yourself in this chest until I see what will come of the business;” and having locked the box and put away the youth’s clothes, she met her husband, who was inflamed like an oven. Throwing her arms round his neck, she exclaimed: “Darling of my soul! I see thee greatly discomposed and confused—what is it?” He replied: “My reason is unwilling to put faith in what I have heard, and I want you to tell me the truth.” The lady smiled and said: “What thou hast heard is quite true. The lamp of my heart was for a long time blazing in the assembly of love towards a young man; the palm-tree of his imagination likewise bore the fruit of attachment to me; and now I have brought him and am in his company. Love is innate in human nature, but has never manifested itself between me and thee. Hast thou not heard of Laylá and Majnún, or read the story of Yúzuf and Zulaykhá? Is there anyone in the world who has not felt the pangs of love? He in the mother-shell of whose heart affection finds no refuge has indeed reaped no fruit from the spring of life.

Love is the ornament of the rose-grove of the heart; It is the guide and leader to each mansion. The breast is a lamp whose flame is love; The heart is a shell, and love the pearl in it. The lamp without a flame is the grave; Without a pearl the shell has no light.

O bazár-master!” she continued, “there is no man or woman who has not tasted the pleasures of this passion; it is inherent in life, and its exhilarating breezes invigorate the rose-garden of politeness. There is no animate being whose nostrils have not been perfumed by the fragrance of the garden of love: perhaps I have no heart, and am no human being? How long shall I dwell with thee? In all circumstances a change of climate becomes necessary. My unfortunate friend has been long prostrated on the bed of sickness for the love which he bears to me, and on account of his exclusion. Humanity and compassion are the chief corner-stones of Islám, and what shall I answer on the day of resurrection if I do not act in compliance with these two duties? Hast thou not heard that a mendicant must not be sent away unrelieved, and that if an ant creep away with one grain the stores will not be diminished?

No harm befalls the granary If a poor ant obtains half a grain.

A hundred thousand persons drink water from one fountain, and several people eat fruit from one date-tree. What deficiency will be entailed upon the rose-grove of my tenderness if the odour of a rose bring tranquility to the nostrils of an unfortunate man? Quench the thirst of a thirsty man with a drop of water, and rescue a fainting one from the labyrinth of distress; for good acts are a dam to misfortunes. Be not melancholy, O bazár-master, for in the banquet of my existence the plates of my tender delicacies are so numerous that a thousand persons like thyself may be satisfied by them for many years.”

The bazár-master said, with astonishment: “Worthless, foolish, and vain woman, what senseless words are you saying?” She replied: “I swear, by the gratitude due for thy affection and friendship, that everything I said was only fun and dissimulation. But if you have any doubts on the subject come and see for yourself.” She then led the way, and her husband followed her until they reached her chamber. When he beheld the youth’s clothes, the arrangements for drinking, and the decorations, he began to blaze up like a flame, and to ferment like a tub of wine—in short, he was quite beside himself, and asked: “Where is the young man?” She answered: “He is in that chest. I have concealed him in it, and if you do not believe it, take the key—open and look.” The bazár-master had no sooner taken the key than his wife burst into laughter, clapped her hands, and exclaimed: “I remember, but you forget!” Her husband threw down the key, and said: “Miserable woman, you have destroyed my patience. Was it worth while thus to trifle with my affection?” With these words he left the house; but during the conversation the young man was like one suspended between death and life. When it was evening the lady opened the chest, and said to him: “Leave this place quickly, and remove the spectacle of this intention from your eyes, for you were near being invested with the robe of a lover.” The young man thanked God for having preserved his life, and fled precipitately.[243]

* * * * *

After the bird of the bazár-master’s wife had laid this egg in the nest of deceit, she informed the spouse of the superintendent of police that she had also spread her net and captured the coveted game; and that now, the field being free, she was prepared to see what fruit the tree of her friend’s accomplishments would bear.

_The Trick of the Wife of the Superintendent of Police._

The narrator of this tale causes the rose-bud of his rhetoric to blossom from the dew of composition as follows: When the wife of the superintendent of police was apprised that her turn had come, she revolved and meditated for some time what trick she was to play off upon her lord, and after coming to a conclusion she said to him one evening: “To-morrow I wish that we should both enjoy ourselves at home without interruption, and I mean to prepare some cakes.” He replied: “Very well, my dear; I have longed for such an occasion.” The lady had a servant who was very obedient and always covered with the mantle of attachment to her. Next morning she called this lad and said to him: “I have long contemplated the Hyacinth[244] grove of thy symmetrical stature. I know that thou travelest constantly and faithfully on the road of compliance with all my wishes, and that thou seekest to serve me. I have a little business which I wish thee to do for me.” The lad answered: “I shall be happy to comply.” Then the lady gave him a thousand dínars and said: “Go to the convent which is in our neighbourhood, give this money to one of the Kalandars,[245] and say: ‘A prisoner whom the Amír had surrendered to the police escaped last night. He resembles thee greatly; and as the superintendent of police is unable to give account of his prisoner to the Amír, he has despatched a man to take thee instead of the escaped criminal. I have compassion for thee and mean to rescue thee. Take this sum of money; give me thy dress, and flee from this town; for if thou remainest till the morning thou wilt be subject to torture and lose thy life.’”

The lad acted as he was ordered; brought the Kalandar’s garments and handed them to his mistress. When it was morning the lady said to her husband: “I know you have long wished to eat sweetmeats, and, if you will allow me, I will make some to-day.” He said: “Very well.” His wife then made all things ready and began to bake the sweetmeats, when the superintendent of police said: “Last night a theft was committed in such a place and I sat up late to extort confessions; and as I have had a sleepless night, I feel tired and wish to repose a little.” The lady answered: “Very well;” so her husband reclined on the pillow of rest; and when the sweetmeats were ready she took a portion, and after putting an opiate into one she roused him, saying: “How long will you sleep? This is a day of feasting and pleasure, not of sleep and laziness. Lift up your head and see if I have made the sweets according to your taste.” He raised his head and ate a piece of the hot cake and presently a deep sleep overcame him. The lady at once undressed her husband and put on him the Kalandar’s garments, and the slave-boy shaved his beard and made tattoo marks on his body.

When night had set in the lady called to the slave-boy: “Hyacinth, take the superintendent on thy back and carry him to the convent in the place of that Kalandar, and should he wish to return home in the morning do not allow him.” The lad obeyed; and towards morning the superintendent recovered his senses a little, but as the opiate had made his palate very bitter he became extremely thirsty. He fancied he was in his own house and bawled out: “Narcissus,[246] bring water.” The other Kalandars awoke, and after hearing several shouts of this kind they concluded he was under the effects of bhang and said: “Poor fellow! The narcissus is in the garden. This is the convent of sufferers, and there are green garments enough here. Arise and sober thyself; for the morning and harbinger of benefits, as well as of the acquisition of victuals for subsistence, is approaching.” When the superintendent heard these words he thought they were in a dream, for he had not yet fully recovered his senses. He sat quietly, but was amazed on beholding the vaults and ceiling of the convent. He got up, looked at the clothes in which he was dressed, and at the marks tattooed on his body, and began to doubt whether he was awake or asleep. He washed his face, and perceived that the caravan of his mustachios had likewise departed from the plain of his countenance. In this state of perplexity he went out of the monastery and proceeded to his house. There his wife and servants had made their arrangements and were expecting his arrival. Approaching the door and knocking for admission, Hyacinth demanded: “Whom seekest thou, O Kalandar?” “I want to enter the house.” Quoth the slave-boy: “Evidently thou hast taken thy morning draught of bhang more copiously than usual, since thou hast thus foolishly mistaken the road to thy convent. Depart! This is not the place in which vagabond Kalandars are harboured. This is the mansion of the superintendent of the police, and if the símurgh should look uncivilly at this place from his fastness in the west of Mount Káf,[247] the wings of his impertinence would be at once singed.” The superintendent replied: “What nonsense is this thou art speaking? Get out of my way, for I do not relish thy imbecile prattle.” But when he would have entered, Hyacinth dealt him a blow on the shoulder with a bludgeon, which the superintendent returned with a box on the ear, and they began to wrestle together. Just then the lady and her slave-girls rushed forth from the rear and assailed the superintendent with sticks and stones, shouting: “This Kalandar wishes in broad daylight to force his way into the house of the superintendent, who is unfortunately sick, else he would have hanged the rascal.” By this time all the neighbours were assembled before the house, and on seeing the Kalandar’s shameless proceedings they exclaimed: “Look at that impudent Kalandar, who wants forcibly to enter the house of the superintendent!” Ultimately the crowd amounted to more than five hundred persons, and the superintendent was put to flight, pursued by all the boys of the town, who pelted him with stones.

At a distance of three farsangs from the town was a village, where the superintendent concealed himself in a corner of the mosque. In the evenings he went from house to house and begged for food to sustain life, until his beard grew again and the tattoo marks began to disappear. Whenever any one inquired for the superintendent at his house, the answer was, that the gentleman was sick. After a month had passed, the grief of separation and the misery of his condition had again drawn the superintendent back to the city. He went to the monastery because fear hindered him from going to his own house. His wife happened one day to catch a glimpse of him from a window, and perceived him sitting in the same dress with a company of Kalandars. She felt compassion for him, and thought: “He has had enough of this!” Making a loaf and putting an opiate into it, she said to the slave-boy: “When all the Kalandars are asleep, go and place this loaf under the head of the superintendent,” which he did accordingly. When the superintendent awoke during the night and found the loaf, he supposed it had been placed there by one of his companions, and ate part of it and fell into a deep sleep. Some hours afterwards, the slave-boy, as directed by his mistress, went to the convent, and taking the superintendent on his back carried him home.

When it was morning the lady took off the Kalandar’s dress from her husband and clothed him in his own garments, and then began to bake sweetmeats as on the former occasion. After some time the gentleman began to move, and his wife exclaimed: “O superintendent, do not sleep so much. I have told you that we are to spend this day in joy and festivity, and it was not right of you to pass the time in this lazy manner. Lift up your head and see the beautiful sweetmeats I have baked for you.” When the superintendent opened his eyes and saw himself dressed in his own clothes, the rose-bush of his amazement again brought forth the flowers of astonishment, and he cried: “God be praised! What has happened to me?” He sat up, and said: “Wife, things have occurred to me which I can hardly describe.” Quoth the lady: “From your uneasy motions during sleep, it appears that you have had very strange dreams.” “Strange dreams!” echoed the husband. “From the moment I lay down I have experienced the most extraordinary adventures.” The lady rejoined: “Assuredly! Last night you ate food which disagreed with your stomach, and to-day its vapours seem to have ascended into your brains, causing you all this distress.” Said he: “You are right. Last evening I was with a party at the house of Serjeant Bahman, where I heartily partook of a pillau, and it has surely been the cause of all my trouble.”

* * * * *

When the three companions in the lists of deceit had executed their different stratagems, they went according to arrangement to the same bath, in order to state their cases to the old hag who had promised to award the ring to the most cunning of the three ladies; but to their surprise and chagrin they learned that she had departed to another country, thus outwitting them all, and kept the coveted ring for herself.

THE ENVIOUS VAZÍR.

In days of yore and times of old there was a merchant in Yaman of the name of Khoja Bashír, who was adorned with all good qualities. He enjoyed the intimacy of the king’s society, and the star of his good luck was so much in the ascendant with the king’s favour that the splendour of the lamp of his presence was constantly illuming the courtly assembly of royalty, which could never for a moment dispense with it. The king was accustomed to avail himself of his advice in all grave and subtle affairs, and rewarded him with many favours. But his majesty had a Vazír of an envious disposition, the merchandise of whose unhappy temper was neither current nor acceptable in the warehouse of humane qualities. This Vazír hated Khoja Bashír because he was superior to himself in ability and was much in the king’s intimacy. He thus reasoned with himself: “It is probable that the king will become alienated from me and confer the vazírate upon Khoja Bashír. It is every man’s duty to look after his own affairs and endeavour to remove his enemies. While Khoja Bashír continues to drink from the cup of life and dress in the robe of royal favours, the colour of distress will never be removed from the face of the sun of my quietude, nor can my heart rest for a moment in peace. Therefore I must make the utmost efforts and concoct a plan by which Khoja Bashír will not only lose the regard of the king but be either put to death or exiled from this city.” Day and night this purpose was uppermost in his mind, until on one occasion he happened to be alone with the sultan, and availing himself of the opportunity he said to his majesty:

“O king of high lineage and great power, By thy existence the throne’s glory is honoured! May the flag of thy prosperity and grandeur always adorn the sphere! The very dust of thy court brightens the eye of dignity!

As, according to the canons of government and the administration of affairs, vazírs are called the keys of the treasury of the regulations of business, and the bankers of the good and evil transactions of the governments of honoured potentates, I venture to trouble your majesty about a matter which has taken place in opposition to the customs of obedience.” The king said: “Speak,” and the Vazír thus proceeded: “Two things injure the edifice and the dignity of government: one is to lightly esteem honoured and respected persons, and the other is to exalt those who are mean and nameless. Every one who seeks the shadow of the humaí of prosperity and of royalty must for several reasons keep in mind these two things. Khoja Bashír, the merchant, who is placed on the upper seat of your majesty’s proximity and regard, is a man of low extraction, a criminal, and notorious for his immorality. His wife is an adulteress, who has stepped quite beyond the pale of modesty, and scruples not to be present and to roam in all assemblies and crowds and associate with all sorts of vagabonds and profligate persons. And it is a matter of astonishment that, with all your perfections and wisdom, your majesty should have fallen into this heedlessness.” As the king had many times tried the character of Khoja Bashír on the touchstone of examination and experience, and had never discovered a flaw in the gem of his essence and qualities, he was amazed, and, refusing to assent to the accusations of the Vazír, he said to him: “It is scarcely possible that I should associate with a man of that description. I have found him perfect, and the pure gold of his morals void of the dross and alloy of vices. What you say about his character is far from probable, and you must establish your asseveration by witnesses and proofs, that I may believe it, else I shall punish you with the utmost severity.” The Vazír now regretted and repented of what he had said, but asked the king for a week’s respite; and during that time his mind was day and night wandering like a pen over the plain of composition, and meditating by what ruse he might strike the lightning of defamation into the granary of the modesty of Khoja Bashír’s wife.

In that city lived a deceitful old hag, who was well skilled in all sorts of cunning tricks. The Vazír sent for her, and, after anointing all the limbs of her expectations with the oil of promises, he said to her: “There is an engagement between me and the king, and for my purpose I require you to bring me, in any way you possibly can, some token from Khoja Bashír’s wife.” The old crone answered: “By my soul! I shall endeavour my utmost to do you this piece of service.” Next day she put on an old tattered dress, and assumed the appearance of a poor and destitute creature; and going to the house of Khoja Bashír, as if to beg, wished to enter, but the porter repulsed her, upon which she exclaimed: “O accursed one! hast thou not heard that

‘Whoever impedes the begging of the poor Is a mean wretch, who will go to hell’?

What loss wilt thou suffer if I go into the prosperous house of the Khoja and the ant of my hope obtain one grain of profit from the storehouse of his succour?” She again put forth the foot of effort to gain admittance, but the porter held his staff before her, and said: “The Khoja is at present with the king, and I cannot allow any person to enter in his absence.” Hereupon the old woman threw herself upon the ground, and screamed: “The doorkeeper has killed me!” She bit and wounded her limbs, besmeared them with blood, and cried: “Alas, my little ones will be orphans!” When the wife of the Khoja heard the clamour of the hag she sent the eunuchs out, and when they saw an old woman lying on the ground, apparently in the agony of death, they asked her: “Who art thou, and what has happened to thee?” She replied: “I am a poor, weak, old woman, and have come to the prosperous mansion of the Khoja in the hope of obtaining assistance, but in consequence of my unfounded expectations my life has fallen a prey to the winds of annihilation from the beating inflicted on me by the doorkeeper.” The eunuchs blamed the porter, saying: “Unfortunate man! The removal of misfortunes and the attainment of high degrees are connected with the advent [and relief] of mendicants. Art thou not ashamed of having so unmercifully stricken this old beggar-woman?” The porter swore to the untruthfulness of her assertions, and related the whole matter, after which the eunuchs communicated the facts to the wife of the Khoja, who was very kind-hearted, and said to them: “Bring the poor creature in, by all means, that I may investigate her case; for destitute persons and darveshes are the caravan of God’s mercy and pity, and to injure them kindles the flame of his anger.”

The eunuchs wrapped the old hag in a carpet and carried her before the Khoja’s wife, who at once applied to her nostrils different perfumes, such as castor, sandal, and aloe. After a while the old crone opened her eyes and let loose the general of the caravan of deceit, namely, her tongue, in praises and good wishes for the lady, saying: “Noble lady, may you obtain the approbation of God, and may your future circumstances be still more prosperous! Had my weak limbs not been strengthened by the balsam of your kindness, the stamina of my life would have been disturbed by the grasp of death in consequence of the ill-treatment which I received from the doorkeeper, and my little children would have been afflicted by the bitter poison of becoming orphans.” Then she began freely to weep and lament, saying: “O treacherous Destiny! thou hast thrown me into the heart-burning flames of the death of Khoja Távus, my husband. Was it not enough to deprive me of so great a blessing, and to subject me to the trials of poverty, and to compel me to seek for a precarious maintenance for my children, and to induce me to do things of which my slaves would have been ashamed? O noble lady, I was a woman of honour and reputation, and of a very high family, but the reverses of Fortune have deprived me of my husband and property, and driven me away from the mansion of tranquility and comfort. Every day a thousand destitute and worthy persons were supplied from the table of my bounty. But one day I sent a mendicant away empty-handed, and on that account the torrent of diminution has overthrown the castle of my affluence, and reduced me to this needy condition. The poor are the spies of the palace of monotheism: to give them alms, and to treat them well, is an occasion of the increase of the vernal garden of God’s favour; but to disappoint them brings on the destruction of the mansion of comfort and life.

If thou debar a beggar of aid Thou wilt enjoy no pleasure. The prayer of the mendicant Will preserve thee from ill luck. Give thy scraps to the poor, That thou mayest always prosper.

O respected and noble lady, the fame of Khoja Bashír’s liberal disposition has to-day induced me to apply at this place. I came here eagerly to obtain a morsel of your bounty; but as such an accident has befallen me, God be praised, what other remedy is there but patience and gratitude? What use is there to contend with Fate?”

By this address the old hag had so well sown the seeds of weeping and lamentation in the net of incantation, and had so dexterously sung the threnody of her sadness and poverty, that the unsuspecting bird of the lady’s simplicity was taken in the meshes of her ruse. The lady wept, and begged her pardon for the injuries she had received from the doorkeeper, and said: “Wait until the Khoja returns home, and I will give thee gold and silver enough for the comfort of the remainder of thy life, and thou wilt not need to make any more demands on the liberality of others. Though thou seest much property here, I am not able to dispose of it without my husband’s permission.” The old crone waited till evening, but the Khoja had not returned, so she said: “Honoured lady, the Khoja has not yet come, and my little children, who know that I have taken refuge at this threshold, are expecting to participate in his bounty.” The lady divested herself of a robe, handed it to the old trot, and said: “This dress is my own property; sell it and provide for your orphans, until I get something handsome for you from the Khoja in the morning.”

The old woman took the robe and hastened with it to the house of the Vazír, saying to him: “I have obtained an evident token from the wife of Khoja Bashír.” The Vazír was extremely rejoiced, and proceeded that very night to the king after the Khoja had departed to say his prayers, and, showing the dress, said: “May the spheres always revolve according to the will of your majesty, and may the sun of your prosperity shine in the zenith of good fortune! Your humble servant has brought a token of the guilt of Khoja Bashír’s wife, who often comes to me; but, in consideration of my virtue and of the favour which I enjoy from your majesty, as well as because of the good will I bear towards Khoja Bashír,[248] I have always tried to dissuade her from her misconduct and never admitted her into my house. Last night, however, for the purpose of obtaining some proof of her guilt I sent for her; she was with me till morning, and this is a sign of her presence. Even this evening she came again, but I sent her away. Let this robe be shown to Khoja Bashír, and if he should not recognise it I shall find means to give him the particulars.” The king was greatly displeased, and the vazír took his leave. When Khoja Bashír returned the king said nothing to him about the affair, and the Khoja, as usual, slept in the palace. But when the belle of the morn invested herself with the robe of dawn and seated herself in the edifice of the Orient, the king showed the garment to Khoja Bashír, saying: “Last night the police met a gang of thieves and took this dress from them. I wonder whose it may be?” As soon as the Khoja’s eye alighted on the garment he recognised it, trembled and became pale, and said: “The dress belongs to one of your servant’s household; but as I have been for some time in attendance on your majesty, I do not know what has happened in my family.” Then said the king: “You vile wretch! Are you not ashamed to keep so guilty a woman in your house, who spends every night in the company of a fresh lover? Last night your wife was in the house of the Vazír till morning, and this dress has been brought to me as a proof of the fact. I am in fault to have admitted such an unprincipled fellow into my society.” Khoja Bashír was thunder-struck; but as he had no reason to doubt his wife’s modesty, he knew that this was a trick of the Vazír. He tried in vain to undeceive the king, who was so excited that he at once issued orders for his execution, and so he was taken from the palace to the place where he was to be put to death.

The Khoja had a slave-boy who was much attached to him, and he ran to the house and informed his master’s wife of what had happened. The lady said: “There is no harm done. I gave away the dress in charity and for the sake of gaining favour with the Most High; nor can the promise which he has given with reference to the beneficent ever fail in its effects, and he will not allow any ill to befall the Khoja.” She handed a purse of gold to the lad and bade him give it to the executioners, to induce them to delay carrying out the sentence on the Khoja, to which they willingly consented, as they had received many favours from him while he was in the king’s service. In the meantime the Khoja’s wife threw a veil over her head and went to the palace, where she found the Vazír, who had come to prevent any attempt that might be made to rescue the Khoja. The lady exclaimed: “O king, I seek justice from the tyranny and wickedness of the Vazír!” Said the king: “What injustice has the Vazír done you?” She answered: “I am a stipendiary of grandees, and in this way do I gain my livelihood. It is almost fifteen years since I began to wait on the Vazír. He promised to give me nine hundred dirhams annually, but he now presumes upon his high station and gives me nothing. Last night when I asked him for what is due to me he threatened to have me killed.” The Vazír was amazed, and on being questioned by the king said: “This woman speaks what is not true. I swear by the head of your majesty that I have never seen her nor do I know her.” Then the lady said: “He has made a false oath by the head of his benefactor! Let him write down his assertion, and if his treachery should become evident to your majesty let him be duly punished.” The Vazír arose and scrutinised the face and stature of the lady, and then wrote a declaration that he had never seen or known this woman, and that if his assertion proved false he would resign his life and leave his blood to be licked by the dogs. After the Vazír had delivered this paper to the king, the lady said: “Let it be known to the exalted mind of your majesty that I am the wife of Khoja Bashír, the merchant, against whom this tyrannical individual, to satisfy his hatred and envy, concocted this stratagem with reference to me. God the Most High has said that whoever uses cunning towards another shall also be over-reached by cunning.” She then explained the matter fully, and added: “As the Vazír declares that he does not know me, how could I have been with him last night?”

The king became convinced of the treachery of the Vazír, who was overwhelmed with shame and fell, as it were, into the agonies of death. Khoja Bashír was by the king’s order immediately brought back from the place of execution, and his wife returned to her house. The old hag was produced and examined, but would not confess until the instruments of torture were brought, when she spoke as follows: “As women are of imperfect understanding,[249] I cannot be guilty. At the instigation of the Vazír I entered the house of the Khoja, where that virtuous and modest lady, his wife, took off the robe from her own body and bestowed it on me for the sake of God. Disregarding her kindness, the greediness of my disposition induced me to transgress the straight path, in order to obtain the reward promised to me by the Vazír.” The king caused both the Vazír and the old hag to be suspended on the gallows. He approved the prudent demeanour of the wife of Khoja Bashír, begged pardon of the Khoja, and installed him into the dignity of the Vazír, whose whole property he bestowed upon him.

THE BLIND BEGGAR.

There was a man in Tabríz the orbs of whose vision were deprived of the faculty of seeing, and the stature of his circumstances had lost the robe of wealth. He went from house to house begging and was in the habit of chanting these verses:

“Whoever turns his face from the road of justice, His breast will become a target for the shafts of misfortune.”

One day he went about according to his custom, and having stopped near a rich man’s house, he began to beg, and also recited the above distich. The master of the house refreshed his thirsty lips with the pleasant shower of a gift and said: “I have often heard you chant these words; tell me your reason for so doing.” The blind man thus replied:

“Kind and humane Sir, why do you ask me to relate to you an event which is sad, and still rankles in my heart? My birth-place is in Syria, near Damascus. My father in the beginning of his career was a hawker, and in that business he considered honesty, piety, and justice as the principal stock-in-trade of the shop of his livelihood. By the blessing of these upright principles his condition was improved, and day by day the darkness of his poverty was being dispelled by the lamp of prosperity; his wealth gradually increased so much that he became a dealer in jewels, and having with some other merchants undertaken an expedition to Bahrayn, he bought there a great quantity of pearls and returned home. He engaged in that business with several assistants and the star of his good fortune was daily rising till it culminated, and he became one of the wealthiest men in that country. The diver in the sea of Destiny extracted the pearl of my father’s life from the shell of his existence. All his property became mine; and having sat down in the depository of my father’s welfare and ease, I spread like him the carpet of the self-same employment and occupation. The tree of greediness for money had struck deep roots in my heart; and worldliness had obtained such a complete dominion over me that I was deprived once for all of the reins of self-control. In lucrative speculations and mercantile transactions I took dishonesty and fraud into my partnership; and, although I endeavoured to cover the reproving eye of conscience with the sleeve of prohibition, I was unable to cope with my insatiable greediness. It is considered as very mean to commence business in the bazár before sunrise, but I was in the habit of doing so,[250] and one day, just when I had opened my shop, there came a man of sinister aspect, from whose face the jaundice of poverty had wiped off the bloom of health. He began to praise God, and, having drawn from his pocket a precious pearl, thus addressed me: “Young man, I had once great riches and possessions, but by a sudden reverse of fortune I was made penniless in the twinkling of an eye, and all that has remained to me is this pearl. The destitution of my family and my own difficulties have compelled me to offer it for sale in order to ward off other evils, until the breeze of prosperity again begins to blow towards me.” I took the pearl from his hand, and although it was extremely valuable and I was astonished at its beauty, purity, and splendour, yet, influenced by the cunning of our trade, I turned contemptuously towards the man and said: “This pearl is not so precious as you suppose; your poverty, however, induces me to buy it. What is the price?” Then I pretended to busy myself with something else, but the desire to possess the pearl had pervaded my whole being, and I was afraid lest it should become the prey of another dealer. The man replied: “Dear friend, though you see me now in a state of distress, there was a time when I presented many such pearls to my friends. It is not worth while to make so much about the sale of a single pearl, and I myself am perfectly aware of its real value; but as I have come to your shop I should feel ashamed to go round the others. Your own skill and knowledge are perfectly competent to decide this matter, and you may offer me whatever you think just and equitable.” He then handed the pearl to me once more, and though I contended with my greediness to offer him one half of its value my wicked nature would not consent. I drew forth twenty dirhams from my pocket and placed them before him. He took the money, and drawing a deep sigh he exclaimed: “What justice and humanity!” and went his way. I was highly pleased at having thus obtained a gem for twenty dirhams which would have been cheap at a thousand. I drew every moment the comb of complacency over the mustachios of my shrewdness, and placed the hand of approbation on the shoulder of my expertness, and never suspected that the day of retribution would overtake me.

“Only two days had elapsed after this transaction when I again opened my shop at sunrise, before any other inhabitant of the bazár had begun to stir. I was arranging my shop when one of the principal citizens passed on horseback, and, thrusting my head out from the door to see who the cavalier was, the horse shied, the rider was thrown violently to the ground and immediately expired. A crowd of attendants that followed fell on me, beat me with sticks, and then tied my hands. The other shopkeepers, who were unfriendly towards me on account of my greediness of gain, began to gather round me; they heartily wished that I might fall into some scrape, and much as I tried to explain no one paid any attention; but one of them said: ‘The accumulation of wealth by the unworthy and dishonest clearly points to accidents like this.’ So much of this kind of talk passed that the majority were convinced of my guilt, and declared that I had killed the man. The police, having tied my hands and neck together, took me before the Amír of Damascus, who was a rapacious man and coveted riches. He considered this as a very good opportunity to attain his end; and the guards also said that, by the coruscation of the Amír’s star of prosperity, this day a wonderfully fat piece of game had fallen into their hands. No time was given me to explain: the Amír made a sign that I should be decapitated. Some of the bystanders, however, pleaded for mercy, and I was fined a thousand gold dínars.

“By the depredation of this misfortune I was mulcted of more than half of my property, and, although the loins of my patience had been crushed by the burden of this loss, I again spread out on all sides the net of acquisition, and the sportsman of my mind was running about in search of the game of wealth, when one day, while I was sitting in my shop, two well-dressed women came up, one of whom had a baby in her arms, the other carried a casket, and both sat down on the threshold of the shop. The woman with the child in her arms took some gold ashrafís from her pocket, and, handing them to the other, said: ‘Give this money to Haji Jalál Kazviní for the articles which you bought yesterday, and say that I shall send him the balance to-morrow. Tell him also that he must quickly procure the jewels which are required, because the wedding is to take place in ten days. I will wait here for you; return speedily with an answer.’ When the woman had departed on her errand I became anxious for gain, because I had heard a wedding spoken of and had seen the gold ashrafís; so I said to her who remained: ‘Lady of the haram of modesty, where have you sent your companion?’ She replied: ‘The daughter of such a citizen is to be given in marriage to the vazír’s son, and we, being attached to the household of the young lady, have come to the bazár, because we were in need of some fine linen and jewels; the first we bought yesterday of Haji Jalál and have now sent him the price, with orders to procure the jewels as soon as possible.’ On hearing this, I poured a considerable sum of money into the pocket of my imagination, and I said to her: ‘Noble and honoured lady, I have many precious jewels. Allow me to exhibit them to you, and you may choose those which you consider suitable; there will be no difficulty in agreeing about the price.’ The woman answered: ‘The lady to whom the jewels are to be submitted for approbation is very nice in her choice and difficult to please. During the last few days we have shown her many jewels, but she desires to see only high-priced gems; besides, we have already bargained with Haji Jalál and bought jewels of him, and he is very considerate towards ourselves.’ When she had spoken thus, I knocked at the door of compliance and observed: ‘Nor would I be disposed to forfeit your good will, because thereby I should be greatly benefited in the profitable transaction of business with great people.’ She said: ‘We shall see.’ While we were thus conversing her companion returned and handed her a string of valuable pearls. She cast a glance at me, whispered something to her companion, and then continued speaking to her aloud: ‘Since you have brought them, let them remain also.’ Turning to me, she said: ‘Show us your jewels.’ I produced a small box which contained my principal stock, displayed the most rare and beautiful pearls and gems which I possessed, and stated the price of each. I also fixed the price of the pearl which I bought from that stranger at two thousand dirhams. The woman said: ‘I cannot tell whether they will approve of these or not.’ She sealed the box, took out her tablets and wrote something, which she delivered with the box to her companion, and said to me: ‘I shall remain here, while the lady of the house makes her choice. If you like, you may send somebody with my friend, in order to learn where the house is.’ I had a faithful servant whom I sent along with her companion, and the woman herself sat down in my shop. Presently two men in the bazár began to quarrel, and when they reached my door they drew their swords and began to fight. A great crowd gathered quickly, and the men of the Amír also came to fetch those who had witnessed the affair. They compelled the shopkeepers to follow and dragged me also with them. Meanwhile the woman remained sitting in my shop with the child in her arms, and said to me: ‘Do not be uneasy about your shop, for I will take care of it till you return.’ I proceeded a few paces, till it occurred to me that the woman might deceive me, so I said to the butcher whose shop was next to mine: ‘Take care of this woman.’ As he had no knowledge of my transaction with her, he supposed that I wished him to take care of the shop only, and said: ‘All right.’

“As some time had elapsed since my servant went with the woman and the box of jewels and had not yet returned, and as the other woman was by herself in my shop, I was full of anxiety and went with an oppressed heart to the court of the Amír. When I arrived there all the witnesses had been examined and discharged. I was taken into the presence of the Amír to give my testimony, but being in a very distracted state of mind I gave my evidence in a way which did not correspond with that of the other witnesses. The Amír smiled and said: ‘This is the wretch who killed such a man,’ and the people said: ‘So it is!’ The Amír continued: ‘This is the reason why his evidence is contradicting that of all the others; such a worthless fellow deserves to be severely punished.’ When I was led out of the palace I gave a large sum to the officials to induce them to take bail of respectable persons and set me at liberty.

“On returning to my shop, the woman was gone, and my servant was sitting alone crying and in sore distress. I asked him what had become of the jewels and the woman he accompanied; and he in his turn inquired what had become of the woman he had left in the shop with me. I told him that I had committed her to the care of the butcher, and demanded to know where he had been and what he had done with the box of jewels. He replied: ‘You gave the box to the woman, and ordered me simply to follow her so as to learn where the house is, and this I did. I went with her from the bazár and passed through several streets until we reached the street of the Forty Virgins; she stopped at the door of a house, before which a number of respectable people were sitting, and bade me sit down till she came out again. The woman went in, and I remained waiting for her till near noon, but she did not make her appearance. When it was mid-day and I heard the voice of the muezzin, and beheld crowds entering the house, I supposed that somebody had died there and that the people were going to condole with the relatives. After a while they all came out again. At last I asked one of the people: “Does the woman who went in here not intend to come out at all?” The man laughed and said: “Whose house do you suppose this is? And what woman are you speaking about? Step forward, there is none to prohibit you, and see what place this house is.” I arose from my seat and entered the portico with fear and apprehension, and proceeded till I reached the interior of a mosque where I saw people engaged in prayer. On the opposite side of the mosque I saw an open door through which people were also coming and going. Then I knew that the woman must have passed through it. I went out by that door and saw women like her walking about, but as there was nothing particular in her dress by which I might have recognised her, and not knowing her name, I wandered through the streets for some time and then hopelessly returned to the shop.’[251]

“I was choked with grief at these tidings, and almost lost my senses. I went to the butcher and asked him what had become of the woman whom I had left to his care, and he answered: ‘When did you entrust a woman to me? You only asked me to look after your shop. When you were gone I noticed a woman sitting there with a child in her arms, and I asked her with whom she had any business, to which she replied: “I want a sum of money from the jeweller.” Presently she brought the child and said: “Let this child remain here till I come back,” and went away, and there is the child in your shop.’ I said: ‘Bring it out, that I may see it.’ The butcher did so, and when I raised the veil from its face we discovered that it was a plaster figure dressed up as an infant. I said to the butcher: ‘This is a very strange child!’ He replied: ‘Leave off joking; go in and inquire for the woman.’ I continued: ‘I entrusted the woman to your care, and I want you to produce her. She remained in my shop as a pledge for more than three thousand tománs’ worth of jewels.’ He replied: ‘You fool! Perhaps I was your servant, that I should take care of the woman, instead of your doing so yourself!’ I was in so great a state of excitement that I took up his great knife which was lying near me and threw it at him; it wounded him in the face. His friends and neighbours seized and carried me before the Amír, who ordered them to kill me. But there were many that said: ‘This man is crazy: of what use could it be to kill him? Let his possessions be confiscated, and himself be expelled from the city, as a warning to others.’

“All that I possessed was taken from me as a mulct for my crime, and being driven out of the city, I went away poor and naked. When I reached the desert I lost my road, and wandered about thirsty and hungry for ten days, bitterly lamenting my misfortunes. Suddenly a man met me and mounted me on a camel. Having carried me into the main road, he asked me whether I knew him. I said: ‘Your voice seems to be that of a friend.’ He continued: ‘I am the man who sold you the pearl for twenty dirhams to try your honesty, and I have it with me now’; and putting his hand into his wallet he drew forth the same pearl and showed it to me, saying: ‘Know that I am King Akabil, and that several thousands of genii are subject to me, and my occupation is to go about in the cities and bazárs under various disguises, to discover whether people are honest in their dealings. When I find one upright I always remain his friend and helper; but when I see a man who is unjust and fraudulent, I endanger his life and property. You ought to know that base actions are unrighteousness and deceit towards your fellow beings. On account of your deceitfulness and injustice, the granary of your immense property has in a very short time been blown away by the wind of non-existence.’ I began to cry and complain, but he said: ‘Remorse is now of no avail,’ and disappeared from my sight. So I came to this country and am wandering about in a state of helplessness and destitution, in bitter repentance and grief for my former dishonesty and the loss of my property. Whatever I undertook, nothing succeeded, and at last I became blind. Now begging has become my trade; and the reason why I always chant the same distich is that neither the high nor the low should quit the road of honesty and justice, lest they be exiled, like myself, from the abode of peace and prosperity.”

THE KAZI OF GHAZNI AND THE MERCHANT’S WIFE.

During the reign of Sultan Mahmúd Sabaktaghin,[252] of Ghazní, a man was travelling from Aderbaijan to Hindústán; and when he arrived in Ghazní, he was much pleased with the climate and resolved to settle there. As he had great experience in commerce, he went to the bazár, became a broker, and was very successful in business. He intended to marry, and Fortune being propitious to him, he entered into a matrimonial alliance with a virtuous and handsome young woman. By degrees his business became more and more flourishing, and, having accumulated much wealth, he was numbered among the richest merchants. Wishing to extend his transactions to Hindústán, he sent goods to that country; but as he had no connections or intimate friends who might take charge of his wife till his return, this thought troubled him greatly; and as it is the first duty of a respectable man to be on his guard in this matter, and not to hazard his reputation and honour, he determined not to start on his journey till he had provided an asylum for his spouse. The Kází of the city being noted for his piety, virtue, and honour, the merchant said to himself: “I cannot do better than entrust the keeping of my wife to so godly and honest a man, who enjoys the esteem of rich and poor; so she shall remain in his house until I return from my journey.”

The merchant hastened to make his obeisance to the Kází, and said: “O president of the judgment-seat of truth and piety, from whose highly gifted and penetrating intellect the explanations of religious and secular questions flow, and by whose essentially holy authority the commendatory and prohibitory laws are corroborated—may your most righteous opinion always remain the guide of those who seek to walk in the straight path of piety! I, your humble servant, am an inhabitant of this city, and it is my intention to undertake a journey to Hindústán. I have a young wife, the leaves of whose modesty and virtue are bound up in the splendid volume of her natural excellence; and as I have nobody who might protect and take care of her, and lest she should fall under the obloquy of false tongues, I venture to hope that she may find refuge with your lordship.” The Kází placed the seal of acquiescence upon this request, and said that he would take charge of her; and the merchant, having furnished his wife with money to defray all the necessary expenses for a year, delivered her to the Kází, and set out on his journey.

The lady passed all her time in the house of the Kází in prayer and devotion; and nearly a whole year had elapsed, without the breeze of a single profane glance having blown on the vernal abode of her face, and without her having ever heard the bird of a voice in the foliage of her ears, till one day the Kází unexpectedly made his appearance and looked at her, when he perceived the Laylá-like beauty sitting within the black mansion of her musky ringlets, and her sweet tenderness mounted upon the face of attractiveness and melancholy, the Majnún of the Kází’s intellect became troubled, and, Ferhád-like, he began to dig the Bistán of his soul, which was melting and burning in the censer of distraction. He was desirous of making an attack upon her virtue, but, being aware of her pure nature and chastity, durst not attempt it. One day, however, when his wife went to the public bath and had left the lady alone to take care of the house, he was so completely dominated by his unlawful passion that he threw skyward the turban of concupiscence and exclaimed:

“The desired game for which I looked in the skies Has now on earth fallen into the net of my good fortune.”

He locked the door, and commenced his stratagem by complimenting her modesty, and continued to address her in the following strain: “Virtuous lady, the reputation of my honesty and piety has spread through the world and penetrated all corners. Even the charms of the húrís of Paradise could not seduce my righteous disposition from the road of firm determination, or impel me to transgress the laws of purity; then why do you avoid me so much? If the absence of intelligence and of the knowledge of the true state of things keep your face veiled with the curtain of bashfulness, my obedience to the laws of God and my fear of eternal punishment at the day of resurrection prohibit me from allowing the fire of sensuality to be kindled within me. I would not disturb your peace, even with a single glance of my eye. Be of good cheer, therefore, and throw aside the veil of apprehension from your face, for there is no danger of sinning; and although it is against the law of God and the Prophet to exact services from guests, yet as you belong to the house and I am dependent on your kindness, I would request you to procure me some food, for I am hungry.”

Drawing the prohibitory veil of bashfulness over her face, the lady waited upon the Kází with all due modesty, and having placed food before him she retired into a corner. Now the Kází had provided himself with a drug which deprives of all sense any one who partakes of it, and he said to the lady: “You know that three kinds of persons will be rejected from the mercy of God on the day of the resurrection and subjected to endless tortures: he who eats alone, he who sleeps alone, and he who travels alone; and till now it has never happened to me that I did any of these three things. As I am now eating alone, and one who does this has Satan for his companion, and his faith is endangered, why should you not, in order to free me from the snares of the Devil, defile your hands by partaking of this meal?” He ceased not thus to press the lady till she at length sat down near the table and helped herself to some food, into which the Kází unobserved threw some of the drug. After she had eaten a few morsels she felt faint, and on attempting to rise from the table her feet refused to bear her and she fell senseless on the floor.

The Kází quickly gathered up the articles that were on the table and purposed worse things, when he heard noises outside, which greatly disturbed him, and he was perplexed where to conceal the unconscious lady, so that nobody might discover the matter. He thought of the vault where he kept his money and valuables, which was known only to himself, and into it he thrust the lady, and then went out and found that his family had returned from the bath.

The Kází asked his family: “Why did you leave the house empty?” They answered: “We left the wife of the merchant to take care of the place.” Quoth the Kází: “It is two hours since I came home, and I have seen no one; why do you trust a stranger? She may have taken away something.” They were all astonished, protested that she was not such a woman, and wondered what had become of her. While this talk was going on, the merchant, having just returned from his journey to Hindústán, came to the house of the Kází to inquire for his wife. The Kází said: “It is some time since your wife left my house, without giving notice or asking permission.” But the merchant replied: “O Kází, this is not a time for jesting; give me back my wife.” The Kází swore that he was in earnest. But the merchant said: “I am too well acquainted with the nature and disposition of my wife to believe her capable of such conduct. There must be something more in this affair than appears.” At this the Kází affected to be wroth, and said: “It is I who ought to be offended, you foolish man. Why do you talk nonsense and needlessly insult us? Go and look for your wife!”

As the merchant was devotedly attached to his wife, and the smoke of distress was beginning to ascend from the oven of his brain, he tore the collar of patience and hastened to make his complaint to the sultan, and, prostrating himself upon the carpet of supplication, he recited these verses:

“O exalted and happy monarch, May felicity be the servant of your palace! The Kází of the city has done me injustice Greater than the blast of the tornado of the west. If it be permitted, I will explain The injustice of that mean-spirited wretch.”

The sultan replied: “Set forth your complaint, that I may become acquainted with it.” Then the merchant spoke as follows: “I am a native of Aderbaijan, and the fame of the justice and protection which the poor obtain at the hands of your majesty induced me to settle in this country, and I have dwelt for some years under the shadow of the sultan’s protection. I had a beautiful and modest wife, and, purposing to travel to Hindústán, I committed her a year ago to the charge of the Kází. Now I have returned from my journey, the Kází, led away by covetousness, refuses to give up to me my wife.” The sultan ordered the Kází to be brought before him. When he appeared, the sultan asked him what he had to say regarding the complaint which the merchant made against him. Said the Kází: “May the torch of your majesty’s welfare be luminous and the castle of opposition ruinous! This man entrusted his wife to me, and it is nearly three months since she quitted my house without giving notice, and up to this time she has not come back, and we have failed to discover any trace of her.” To this the merchant responded: “Such conduct is inconsistent with the character of my wife, and I do not believe it.” The sultan asked: “Where are the witnesses?” The Kází said that several neighbours and householders were acquainted with the fact, and wrote down the names of a number of rascals whom he had bribed to give evidence in his favour. At a sign from the sultan to the chamberlain they were brought in and confirmed the assertion of the Kází, upon which the sultan said to the merchant: “As the Kází has established his statement by witnesses, your complaint falls to the ground,” and the merchant retired disappointed.

Now the sultan was in the habit of walking about the bazárs and streets of the city occasionally in disguise, mixing among the people, in order to discover what they thought of him. That night he left his palace according to his wont, and as he walked about he chanced to pass near the door of a shop where a party of boys were playing at the game of “The King and his Vazír.” One of the boys was made king, and said to the others: “As I am king, you are all under my authority, and you must not seek to evade my commands.” Another boy said: “If you give unjust decisions like Sultan Mahmúd, we shall soon depose you.” The boy-king asked: “What injustice has Sultan Mahmúd done?” The other boy answered: “To-day the affair of the merchant came before the sultan. This merchant had confided his wife to the keeping of the Kází, and he hid her in his own house. The sultan called for witnesses, and the Kází gained the case by producing in court witnesses whom he had previously bribed. It is a great pity that people should have the administration of justice in their hands who are unable to distinguish between right and wrong. Had I been in the place of the sultan I should very soon have discovered the truth or falsehood of the Kází’s witnesses.”

When the sultan had heard the conversation of these boys he sighed, and returned to his palace in great agitation of mind; and next morning as soon as it was daylight he sent a servant to fetch the boy who had criticised his judgment of the merchant’s case. The boy was brought, and the sultan received him in a very friendly manner, saying: “This day you shall be my lieutenant from morning till evening, and I intend to allow you to sit in judgment and to act entirely according to your own will.” Then the sultan whispered to the chamberlain to invite the merchant to repeat his complaint against the Kází, and the merchant, having been brought into court, did so. The Kází and his witnesses were next summoned, and when the Kází was about to seat himself the boy said: “Ho, Master Kází, the leading-strings of justice and the power of tying and untying knotty points of law have been long in your hands—how then do you seem to be so ignorant of legal customs? You have been brought into this court as a party in a law suit, and not as an assessor. It is the rule that you should stand below, on an equality with your accuser, till the court breaks up, and then you should obey whatever its decision may be.” Then the Kází went and stood near the merchant, and again asserted that the woman had left his house three months ago. The boy asked: “Have you any witnesses?” The Kází pointed to his followers, saying: “These are the witnesses.” The boy called one of them to him, and asked him in a subdued voice whether he had seen the woman. He said: “Yes.” Then he asked what signs there were on her person, stature, or face. The man became embarrassed and said: “She had a mole on her forehead; one of her teeth is wanting; she is of fresh complexion; tall and slender.” The boy asked: “What hour of the day was it when she went away from the Kází’s house?” The man replied: “Morning.” “Remain in this place,” said the boy. Then he called another witness, who thus described the woman: “She is of low stature and is lean; her cheeks are white and red; she has a mole near her mouth; she left the house in the afternoon.” Having placed this man in another corner, the boy called for a third witness, whose evidence contradicted both the others; and gradually he examined them all and found they disagreed from each other in everything. The sultan was sitting by the side of the boy and heard all; and when the hearing of the witnesses was ended the boy said: “You God-forgetting wretches, why do you give false evidence? Let the instruments of torture be brought that we may find out the truth.” As soon as they heard the word torture they all offered to say the truth, and confessed themselves to be a set of poor fellows whom the Kází had bribed with a sum of money and instructed what to say, and that they knew nothing whatever about the woman. Then the boy called the Kází, and asked him what he had to say in this business. The Kází commenced to tremble and said: “The truth is as I have stated.” The boy said: “Our Kází is a bold man, and his haughtiness hinders him from confessing the truth: the instruments of torture ought to be employed.” When the Kází heard this, the fear of torture greatly distressed him, and he confessed the truth. On this the boy kissed the floor of good manners with the lips of obedience and said: “The rest of this affair is to be settled by the sultan.” The sultan was much pleased with the acuteness and intelligence of the boy, and ordered the Kází to be beheaded and all his property to be given to the merchant’s wife. The boy was treated kindly and educated, until by degrees he won the entire confidence of the sultan and became one of his greatest favourites.

THE INDEPENDENT MAN AND HIS TRAVELLING COMPANIONS.

Historians relate that there were two men of the inhabitants of Kabúl sitting in the corner of poverty, fettered with the chains of hardships and difficulties. The thunderstorms and disturbance of the whirlpools of the sphere’s revolution had overturned the boat of their possessions, and it had become the prey of the whale of destruction. They were screwed in the press of poverty and destitution, like flower-beds from which the oil is to be squeezed out, and the pain and suffering of distress caused them to change colour at each moment like a chameleon till each day was changed into evening. Although they hastened with the foot of labour and diligence in the performance of their occupations, they could never reach the desired mansion of their object on account of their unpropitious fortune and their constant mishaps. The blackness of their morning tinctured the night even of the poor with the reflection of grief, and the mirror of their evening imparted new sorrow to orphans.

One day they said to each other: “In this country the gates of peace are shut upon us, and it is a maxim of the wise that if people meet with difficulties in their own country they ought to remove to another. As the liberal Sultan Mahmúd is now reigning, we must go to Ghazní and do our best to see him, when perhaps the aroma of his generosity will perfume the nostrils of our intention, and our dilapidated circumstances will be altered.” So they set out for Ghazní, and on the road they were joined by a man, the rose-bush of whose disposition was always kept fresh by the dew of piety, and who passed his life in contentment, like one of the blest. He asked them: “My brothers, the shoe of what desire have you put on the foot of your intention? And towards the castle of what pretension have you turned the face of your inclination?” They answered: “Since the lamp of each of us has been extinguished by the wind of misfortune, and the thorn of hardships has pierced the feet of our hearts, and as we could not find the plaster in Kabúl by which the wound of our untoward condition might be healed; and hearing that the gates of the generosity and liberality of Sultan Mahmúd the Ghaznivide have been opened to the rich and poor, and that the banquet of his unbounded graciousness is always spread for the relief of the poor, we hope to re-light the lamp of our circumstances at the blaze of his regard.” Those two men of Kabúl also asked the young man about his intention, and he replied: “Having no possessions in my own country, and the day of my well-being having reached the evening, I am in pursuit of a lawful means of support, but I do not expect aught from Sultan Mahmúd or persons like him. I desire grace and favour of a Sultan, the door of the treasury of whose gifts is besieged by a hundred thousand men as indigent as Sultan Mahmúd, who are contemplating with the eye of hope the storehouse of his infinite grace and bounty.” In short, the three travellers pursued their journey in company till they arrived in Ghazní, where they took up their lodging in a ruined building.

One night all three of them were sitting together in the ruin, conversing on various subjects. It happened that Sultan Mahmúd, accompanied by two of his intimates, had left the palace to walk about in the moonlight. They passed through several streets and lanes till they came near the ruin, and, attracted by the voices, they discovered the travellers and asked them who they were. The two men of Kabúl replied: “We are benumbed by the crapula of the wine of helplessness and distress; we are veiled by the curtain of misery; we are riding the horse of poverty, and are roaming through the ups and downs of this world; and now our fate has guided us to this place, and we shall see how our affairs terminate.” The sultan asked: “What are your wishes?” They answered: “If we tell them, they will never be accomplished; so there is no use in relating them.” Quoth the sultan: “Since the inhabitants of this world are bound to aid each other, it is your duty to inform me of your desires, in order that the complicated knot of that affair may be disentangled by the help of some one’s nail.” One of them replied: “I was one of the rich and the prosperous, and possessed great wealth. This world, which is inconstant like the hues of the chameleon, has ceased to be propitious to me; and the shame of poverty and the disgrace of my family have induced me to quit my country. If I were possessed of ten thousand dínars, I should consider the sum as a capital which might enable me to raise my head again and return to my country.” The other said: “I had a wife sitting veiled in the haram of compliance: the loveliness of the sun of her features surpassed the rose in beauty, and the moon was lessened in splendour by the rays of her cheeks. I loved her much, and could not live one moment without her. She died, and the fire of grief has burnt my liver, and thrown me into the most unhappy condition. Should his highness the sultan present me with a member of his haram, so that by the sun of her presence the mansion of my joy and happiness might become again illumined, I would gladly return to my country.” The third companion remained silent, and the sultan turning to him asked: “Do you not wish for anything?” He answered: “I have to do with God. I need neither a wife nor gold. I turn my face towards the vivifying treasury of God’s mercy, by whom desires are granted, who knows the innermost recesses of our hearts, and what every one deserves: my wishes are all regulated by his good pleasure. If you are in the enjoyment of God’s favour and are able from him to obtain your desires, pray to him for my sake that he may grant me the grace that I should not once draw my breath contrary to his goodwill.” The sultan said nothing, but arose and departed.

When the chamberlain of Destiny had opened the gates of life upon the inhabited earth, and the world-illuming king, the sun, had seated himself in the azure tent of the upper sky, the sultan ordered the three strangers that were in the ruin to be brought into his presence. When they perceived the sultan, they knew him to be the same man who had been with them the preceding night, and they were under the apprehension that he would be angry with them. The sultan called them forward, and inquired of each of them his wants, and the two men of Kabúl repeated what they had said on the previous evening. When the third stranger’s turn came he said:

“Bitter indeed to our lips is the colocynth of mendicancy; We have tasted the sweets of liberality from the hands of the noble-minded.

O thou illuminated speculum of potentates, as long as the storehouse of the works of God is full of blessings, may the treasury of thy desires also remain plentifully provided with the exhilarating gold, silver, and jewels of prosperity! Although people in general may be rejoicing with the delicacies of the table of thy bounty, and thyself mayest thereby taste the sweets of good deeds, still those that sit in the tent of exquisite feelings have so much refreshed their palates with the honey of contentment that they would by no means defile their lips with a single mouthful which belongs to others.

The palate of the contented has never been sweetened by the liberal; The delights of independence are far above the delights which liberality can bestow.[253]

My hopes and expectations are dependent on the threshold of the Eternal King: he will grant to me all that he thinks fit, without my fastening myself on the skirts of petition to any one else, or jeopardising the position of a retiring and modest individual.”

The sultan tried much, but could not induce the young man to act contrary to his avowed principles, and to open his lips to beg for some favour. He gave orders that the man who was in want of a wife should be provided with one of his own damsels, and presented the man who wanted money with two purses of gold. Then he said: “Now, all three of you, return to your own countries.” In obedience to this order they set out together on their journey to Kabúl. After proceeding about two parasangs,[254] the man who obtained the gold felt tired by carrying it, so he handed it to his empty-handed companion, requesting him to carry it for a short time till he had rested himself.

Now the chroniclers relate that when the three men left the presence of the sultan, he turned to his courtiers and said: “That independent man has put me greatly to shame. He left me as if I were in the position of a poor man; and although I tried much he would not accept of anything.” One of the courtiers, who was labouring under the asthma of covetousness, and as the covetous are the natural enemies of the contented, thus gave expression to his innate feelings: “The sultans and kings of this world are the collectors of the treasury of God; and, according to the requirements of the order of mundane affairs, he grants drafts or letters of credit to the poor for the alleviation of their wants, which drafts the rich are bound to accept and honour. Whoever refuses to apply to kings for help scorns their favour, and in this manner acts contrary to the will of God, on account of his pride and independence. Such a man is certainly deserving of death, and ought to be so punished.” The sultan became excited, and ordered one of his chamberlains to proceed on the same road which the three men had taken, and, leaving undisturbed the man who had the gold and him who had the girl, to kill the third person who was empty-handed, and bring his head. It so happened, however, that when the messenger of the sultan overtook them, the independent man carried the gold upon his back, and the possessor of the gold was empty-handed. The chamberlain made no inquiry, but cut off the head of the proprietor of the gold and returned with it to the sultan. When the sultan had looked well at the head he exclaimed: “You are a thoughtless fellow, and have made a mistake.” He despatched forthwith another chamberlain, and enjoined him to decapitate that man who was without any burden whatever. But now it fortuned that the possessor of the girl had entrusted her for a time to the independent man, and fallen a little behind. When the messenger came up, he perceived the owner of the girl following empty-handed in the wake of the independent man, and immediately cut off his head, and on presenting it to his master, the sultan, after looking at it, cried in astonishment: “This man has also been killed by mistake!”

The sultan reflected for a while, and when he became calm, perceived that the grace of God had been a bulwark of protection to that independent man, which had prevented him from coming to any harm. He summoned another attendant, and commanded him to pursue the same road, and bring into his presence the man who possessed both the gold and the girl, which he did accordingly. As soon as the sultan beheld the man, he smiled, and said: “What has become of your companions?” He answered: “May the life of the sultan be everlasting, and may the compliant hand of the sweetheart Prosperity be always round his neck! He who presented them with the gold and the maid has in return taken their lives; and indeed whoever prefers the creature to the Creator turns away his face from the threshold of real felicity, has no refuge whither he might flee, will be trampled under the feet of distressing events, and will not pluck a single flower from the rose-garden of his desires.

Whoever averts his face from his portals Will meet with no regard, to whatever door he turns.”

These observations of the man aroused the sultan from the sleep of indolence, and made him aware that this person had tasted the sweets of benefits from the spread-table of the love and knowledge of God; and he said to him: “Thou ornament of the society of obedience to the laws of God! I am very anxious to bestow something upon you, that I may become infinitely your debtor. I adjure you, by God, to ask something of me.” That happy man thus answered: “I have two wishes. The first is, that you send a very considerable sum of money to Kabúl, to recompense the heirs of the two men who have been slain without any guilt of their own; and the second is, that I may be allowed to enjoy the lease of a small dwelling, in which I may carry on the trade of a weaver, and thus earn an honest livelihood.” The sultan stroked the face of agreement with the finger of beneficence, and said: “You flower-gatherer in the gardens of beneficence! I have also three requests to make of you, with which I trust your kindness will comply. The first is, that, should you entertain any ill-feeling towards me, I beg you to forget it; the second is, that you pray to God that he may blot out my sins from the book of my actions with reference to those two innocent men; and the third is, that you come to me every Friday evening, so that I may profit by my intercourse with you.” The man agreed to all this, and applied himself diligently to his business, till his singleness of purpose placed him in possession of the key to prosperity and wealth; and the gates of well-being having become open in correspondence with his expectation, he was enabled to advance money to the royal treasury whenever it was required, to redeem many people from the penalty of death, and to do much good to worthy and poor people.

THE KING WHO LEARNED A TRADE.

There was, in days long past and in the country of Aderbaijan, a king who administered justice and cherished wisdom; the tiller of his equity-loving nature kept the garden of his kingdom always free of the chaff and rubbish of oppression, and preserved, with the light of the torch of high-mindedness and gifts, the surface of the breasts of those who hoped and solicited from the darkness of hardship and destitution. By means of his discernment he became acquainted with the worth and station due to men of skill, and always honoured the high polish of the speculum of accomplishments and perfections with the throne of dignity and the place of respect. One day, while he was seated in the palace of pomp and splendour, dispensing justice and retribution, and engaged in diving into the depths of the circumstances of the people, two men took hold of the collar of complaint before him, one of whom had no trade, while the other was skilful and accomplished; and, although the former brought forward arguments and evidence in support of his claim, and it became clear that he was in the right, the king purposely turned the scales in favour of the clever man, and ordered him that was without a trade to be punished.

The king had a vazír equal to Plato in science, who always drew upon the book of circumstances with the pen of propriety of opinion and prudence of arrangement. Wondering at the decision of the king, he rose from his place and said: “O thou leader of the caravan of prosperity of realms, by the strokes of whose world-conquering scimitar the peace of the breasts of opponents is destroyed, and from the fruits of whose convoy of success the countries of the hearts of the amicable are made populous and flourishing! I have a request to make: first, that the skyward-flying humaí of your gracious disposition may pervade the atmosphere of compliance with my solicitation.” The king said: “Explain.” And the vazír continued: “I pray that the life of this innocent youth, whose guiltlessness must be visible upon the mirror of your majesty’s mind, may be spared for my sake; and that it might be disclosed to me why your majesty pardoned the guilty one and condemned the innocent.” The king replied: “I have absolved him whom you called guilty because I have arrived at the certainty that he is unblameable and has the right on his side. But I do not consider this the proper time to explain the matter, which, however, will be done as soon as we are alone.”

When the tree of the assembly had shed the leaves and fruits of its multitude and the lamp of the apartment of privacy was trimmed and made bright, the king spake thus to his vazír:

“Thou quintessence of acuteness, something happened to me once which plunged me into the sea of astonishment. From that time I made a vow to show favour to a man who has a profession, even should he be blameworthy otherwise, and to punish him who has no trade or occupation, even though he should be my own son; so that the high and the low, seeing this, should be induced to have their children taught trades in due conformity with their circumstances.

“Know, then, that when my father was yet walking in the garden of life, and was sitting upon the throne of happiness and government, on a certain day those who were present at the audience were discussing the advantages of trades and accomplishments; and, although I had made myself acquainted with several sciences and accomplishments befitting a royal prince, I was desirous of learning some useful craft. I therefore caused each one of the tradesmen of the city to exhibit his skill before me, in order that I might apply myself to the craft which I should prefer. After having seen them all, none pleased me so much as mat-making, because the master of that art had introduced into the specimen which he wrought all sorts of pretty figures. The instructor was engaged, and I was taught until I became skilful in this business. One day I happened to entertain a desire to make a pleasure excursion on the sea, and, having taken leave of the king, embarked in a boat with a number of companions. We amused ourselves for two days with fishing, but, as all mortals are subject to the vicissitudes of Fortune, on the third day a dreadful storm arose, the sea was lashed into furious waves, our boat went to pieces, and my attendants became food for the palate of the whale of destiny. I floated about on a broken plank with two of my associates for several days, drifting like chaff in the ebb and flow of the abyss, and having our throats choked every moment by the gripe of mortal fear. We humbled ourselves at the footstool of the Answerer of prayer, because no one ever besought him in vain; and by his favour the wind drove the broken plank towards the shore, and all three of us, having landed in safety, made our way to an oasis in which were various fruits and aromatic plants, numerous beyond conception. We travelled through this oasis, resting during the night on trees, for fear of wild beasts, and at length reached the city of Baghdád. I possessed several rings of great value, and went to the bazár, accompanied by my friends, in order to procure food. Having sold a ring, we entered the shop of a cook, who displayed a great variety of dishes, and in whose service a handsome boy was busying himself. We handed the master of the shop a few dirhams desiring him to furnish us with some food. He cast a glance at us and said: ‘Young men, nobility and greatness shine from your foreheads. In this city it is considered disgraceful that youths like yourselves should be eating their food in the bazár. There is a handsome room in the neighbourhood to which persons like you are accustomed to resort: do me the favour to proceed thither, and I will supply something worthy of you.’ He sent his boy with us, and we soon reached the house, which was very neat and tastefully ornamented. And we were beginning to amuse ourselves by examining the beautiful paintings upon the walls, when the boy said: ‘I am going to fetch your food.’ As soon as he was gone the floor of the house began to move as if a great earthquake had occurred, and we were all precipitated into a deep well, which was dark like the graves of infidels[255] and black as their hearts.

“Now that cook was a Jew, and an enemy of the Faith; and it was his practice to decoy Muslims into this house, and, having thus entrapped them and put them to death, to roast their flesh and sell it to other Muslims.[256] Our necks were pledged in this affair, and we were in expectation of what turn it would take when the same youth descended into the well, sword in hand, with the intention of murdering us, upon which we said to him: ‘Friend, what advantage will you derive by killing us unhappy wretches? If gain be your object, we know the trade of mat-making, which is very profitable in this city. Bring hither the tools and materials necessary for that business, and we will make a mat every day.’ The youth hastened to inform his master of our proposal, and we were furnished with the required materials, and began at once to make mats, receiving each day a loaf of barley bread. After being in this condition for some time, a plan occurred to me through which our release might be achieved. I finished a mat with all possible care, and worked into the borders of it an account of my circumstances in the Arabic language. This was during the reign of Harún er-Rashíd, and I thought that if this mat were offered to the khalíf it might be the means of our release. The greediness of the Jew having become an obstacle to his circumspection and regard of consequences, he carried the mat to the palace of the khalíf, who highly approved of it; but after examining it more minutely he discovered the meaning of the characters in the borders, and demanded of the Jew whose work it was and where he had got it. He answered: ‘I have a friend in Basra who sent it to me.’ The khalíf said: ‘Wait a little, that I may present thee with a reward worthy of it.’ Then calling a servant to him he whispered something in his ear, upon which he came and delivered us from the well and conducted us into the presence of Harún. When the Jew saw us he began to tremble, and the khalíf demanded of him: ‘Who are these men?’ The Jew struck with his hand the ring of the door of negation, and replied: ‘I do not know.’ Then the instruments of torture were ordered to be brought, and when the Jew heard this he confessed everything. The khalíf commanded the Jew to be hung upon the tree of punishment, and the poison of perdition to be poured into the throat of his existence.

“My plan was highly approved of, and I was sent to the bath and presented with rich clothes. The khalíf then asked me about my adventures, which I related to him from beginning to end. As the long service of my father had laid the khalíf under many obligations to him, and the khalíf knowing well that I was as the apple of my father’s eye, he was the more kind to me, and said: ‘Be of good cheer. Please God, we will help you to return to your own country.’ After entertaining me for several days, he presented me with ten strings of camels and all sorts of things which are necessary or useful to grandees, and dismissed me, with a letter to my father and a guard of fifty men. When I arrived in this city the corpse of my father was just being carried to the cemetery. Having mourned for the death of my father, I established myself firmly upon the throne of dominion. Although my peace was for some time in jeopardy from the misfortunes I had endured, yet it was by the help of a trade that I was saved. I have perfect confidence in skilful men, and have decided always to honour men who have a profession and despise those that have none.”[257]

THE HIDDEN TREASURE.

There dwelt in Damascus a man of the name of Zayn al-Arab, with the honey of whose life the poison of hardship was always mixed. Day and night he hastened like the breeze from north to south in the world of exertion, and he was burning brightly like straw, from his endeavours, in the oven of acquisition, in order to gain a loaf of bread and to feed his family. In course of time, however, he succeeded in accumulating a considerable sum of money, but as he had tasted the bitterness and poison of destitution, and had for a very long time borne the heavy load of poverty upon his back, and fearing to lose his property by the chameleon-like changes of Fortune, one night he carried his money out of the city and buried it under a tree. After some time had passed he began to miss the presence of his treasure and betook himself to the tree, in order that he might refresh his eyes with the sight of it. But when he had dug the ground at the foot of the tree he discovered that his soul-exhilarating deposit was refreshing the palate of some one else. The morning of his prosperity was suddenly changed into the evening of bitterness and of disappointment. He was perplexed as to what friend to confide his secret, and to what remedy to fly for the recovery of his treasure. The lancet of grief had pierced the liver of his peace; and the huntsman of distress had tied up the wings and feet of the bird of his serenity.

One day he went on some business to a learned and wise man of the city, with whom he was on a footing of intimacy, who said to him: “I have for some time past observed the glade of your circumstances destroyed by the burning coals of restlessness, and a sad change in your health, the cause of which I do not know, nor do I know what thorn of misfortune has pierced the foot of your heart, nor what dawn of hardship has risen in the east of your mind.” Zayn al-Arab wept tears of sadness and replied: “O thou standard coin from the mint of love! the treachery of Fortune has brought a strange accident upon me, and the bow of Destiny has let fly an unpropitious arrow upon my feeble target. I have a heavy heart and a great sorrow. Were I to reveal it to you perhaps it would be of no use, and might also plunge you into grief.” The learned man said: “Since the hearts of intimate friends are like looking-glasses, and are receiving the figures of mutual secrets, it is at all times necessary that they should communicate to each other any difficulties which they may fall into, in order that they may be overcome by taking together steps which prudence should dictate.” Zayn al-Arab answered: “Dear friend, I had some gold, and fearing lest it should be stolen, I carried it to such a place and buried it under a tree; and when I next visited the spot I found the garment of my beloved Joseph sprinkled with the blood of the wolf of deception.” The learned man rejoined: “This is a serious mischance, and it will be difficult to get on the track of your gold. Perhaps you were seen by some person when you concealed it: he who has taken it away will surely have to account for it in the next world, for God is omniscient. Give me ten days for consideration of this matter, and it may be that something will occur to me when I have examined the book of expedients and stratagems.”

That knowing man sat down for the space of ten days in the school of meditation; but after turning over the leaves of the volume of his mind from the preface to the epilogue he could devise no plan. On the tenth day they met in the street, and he said to Zayn al-Arab: “Although the diver of my mind has plunged and searched most diligently into this deep sea, he has been unable to take hold of the precious pearl of a wise plan of operation. May God recompense you from the stores of his hidden treasury!” They were conversing in this way when a lunatic met them and asked: “Well, my boys, what is all your secret-mongering about?” The learned man said to Zayn al-Arab: “Come, let us relate our case to this crazy fellow, and see whether some flower will bloom in his mind.” Zayn al-Arab replied: “Dear friend, when you with all your knowledge have failed to devise aught during ten days’ cogitation, how can we expect to obtain any information from this unfortunate, who does not know whether it is day or night?” Quoth the learned man: “There is no telling what he might say to us; but you are aware that the most foolish as well as the wisest have ideas, and a remark, uttered perhaps at random, often furnishes a clue by which the desired end is attained.” Meanwhile a little boy had approached, and seeing the crazy fellow stopped to observe his antics.

The two friends explained their case to the lunatic, who, after being apparently immersed in thought for some time, remarked: “He who took the root of that tree for a medicine also took the gold,” and then turning his back to them went his way. They consulted with each other as to the meaning of the crazy man’s observation, when the little boy asked what kind of a tree it was. Zayn al-Arab replied that it was a jujube-tree. Then said the boy: “This is a simple affair. You ought to inquire of all the doctors in the city for whom a medicine compounded of the roots of that tree has been prescribed.” The learned man greatly approved of the boy’s acuteness and also of the crazy man’s lucky thought; and being very well acquainted with all the physicians of the city, he made his inquiries till he was informed by one of them that about twenty days before he had prescribed for a merchant named Khoja Samander, who suffered from asthma, and that one of the remedies was the root of that jujube-tree. The learned man soon discovered the merchant’s house, found him enjoying perfect health, and thus addressed him: “Ah, Khoja, all the goods of this world ought to be given up to purchase health. By the blessing of God, you have recovered your health, and you ought to restore what you found at the foot of the jujube-tree, because the owner of it is a worthy man, and it was his only possession.” The honest merchant replied: “It is true, I have found it, and it is with me. If you will tell me the amount of the gold I shall deliver it into your hands;” and when Zayn al-Arab stated the exact sum he obtained his lost money.

THE DEAF MAN AND HIS SICK FRIEND.

A deaf man had a friend, the garden of whose health became withered by the autumnal breeze of sickness, and by it he was laid prostrate on the bed of infirmity, and once went on a visit of condolence to him. On the road he said to himself: “When I meet the sick man I shall ask him how he is. And he will certainly reply: ‘I feel a little better.’ Then I will say: ‘God be praised!’ After that I will inquire who his physician is, and he will give me the name of the doctor. Then I will say: ‘He is very skilful, and he will soon free you from your disease.’ After that I will ask what food and medicine he takes. He will tell me, and then I will say: ‘Both of them are very appropriate for your distemper;’ and having recited the _Fátiha_,[258] I shall depart.”

He exercised himself in these questions and answers till he reached the house of his sick friend, who happened at the time to labour under great nausea and depression of spirits. The deaf man asked him: “How do you feel, my friend?” Said the sick man, in peevish tones: “Do not ask me—I am ready to give up the ghost.” The deaf man smiled and said: “God be praised! My prayer has been heard.” After that he asked: “Who is your physician, my friend?” Quoth the sick man: “The angel of death.” This puzzled the deaf man a little, but he answered: “That is well. I also had him in view, because he is so skilful, and cures every patient he treats.” Then he asked what his food and medicine were. The sick man replied: “Pain and distress.” Said the deaf man: “May they redound to your welfare; both are very proper for your disease.” Then he began to recite the _Fátiha_, and the sick man said: “May God forgive you,” and the deaf man took his leave.

THE GARDENER AND THE LITTLE BIRD.

It is related that a rich man in the city of Balkh possessed a garden pleasant to behold as the roses on the cheeks of fairies, adorned with various fragrant plants, blossoming flowers, and fruit-bearing trees. In that garden a little bird took up its abode and amused itself by casting the fruits, whether they were ripe or not, on the ground. Whenever the gardener entered and beheld the damage thus occasioned, the bottom of his heart was stung with the thorn of grief, and the blooming verdure of the spring of his joy became withered by the cold blasts of the autumn of that event. Though he rubbed the hands of regret much on each other, he could not remedy the evil until he had spread a net in the haunts of the bird, which was soon made a prisoner. When the gardener discovered his good fortune he joyfully leaped from his ambush, caught hold of the little bird, intending to despatch it to the regions of non-existence. In its extremity the feathered captive thus spoke to the gardener: “Ornament of the world of intelligence! may the paradise of your good wishes always be the recipient of various divine favours! Consider that if you destroy me, your loss cannot be repaired, and that he who dies is saved from all the troubles of this world. But as I am to be killed for acts which you deem improper, the love of life impels me to make a statement, if you will permit me, after which you may do as you choose; but remember that patience is a virtue of the high-minded, and hastiness a failing of foolish men.”[259] The gardener, whose wrath had somewhat abated during the address of the little bird, replied: “Before the whirlwind of death blows in the field of your life, you are at liberty to say what you desire to say.”

The little bird then said: “Wise gardener, be aware that in the west there is an oasis which my tribe inhabits, but I left my relatives and came to this spot. The pleasantness of this garden attracted me, and for some time I reposed myself on the branch of a tree. A nightingale and a lapwing were sitting together on the top of a date-tree, and a locust was flying towards them which both of them wished to catch. The nightingale was fortunate enough to seize it, but the lapwing snatched it from its captor’s beak. Hereon the nightingale said: ‘O lapwing, are you not ashamed to possess yourself of my prey? If you are able, why do you not catch your own game?’ The lapwing replied: ‘Silence! To get the prey is no honour, but it is so to deprive the hunter of his prey.’ Said the nightingale: ‘This may be true; so I give it up. But, lapwing, I have heard the other birds speak a great deal about you, and now that we have met, and as your species has in the service of the Lord Sulayman (salutation to our Prophet and to him!) enjoyed greater proximity to him than has been the lot of any other kind of birds, I wish to know what gifts or rewards you have obtained from him for the account which you furnished him of the city of Sabá and your help in other matters.’[260] The lapwing replied: ‘King Sulayman bestowed on our species three gifts: (1) Whenever the earth is being dug up for water, we are able to tell at what depth it may be found; (2) our heads have been adorned with the crest of nobility; and (3) we are acquainted with the qualities of fruits, and know that this year the garden in which we are at present has been subjected to a visitation of God, so that whosoever should eat of any of its fruits must immediately die.’ Then the lapwing asked: ‘Has your species been favoured with any other gifts?’ And the nightingale answered: ‘We have also been granted three favours: (1) a very melodious voice, which is pleasing to all hearers; (2) we possess the property of being awake during the night, which we enjoy in common with ascetics and pious men; and (3) we have been invested with the gaudy robes of love, and roses have been assigned for our spouses, whose society we enjoy without let or hindrance, and in the aspect of whose heart-ravishing cheeks we perpetually delight.’

“O most intelligent gardener,” the little bird continued, “when I heard from the lapwing that the fruits of this garden were become deleterious, I made haste to pluck and to throw them down, lest any person should eat of them and be injured. And now if you will promise to liberate me, I will communicate to you three maxims, by means of which you may be happy in this world and the next, and friends and foes will alike obey you.” The gardener said: “Speak!” And the little bird proceeded: “First, never trust persons of a low and uncongenial disposition; secondly, never believe impossibilities; and thirdly, never repent of anything that cannot be remedied.” So the gardener relaxed his hold, and the little bird flew away, perched on a tree, and stretching out its neck, exclaimed: “O gardener, if you knew what a treasure you have allowed to slip from your hand, you would end your own life. Verily, I have deceived you!” Said the gardener: “How?” “In my body is a gem as large as a duck’s egg, the like of which has never been discovered by the diver into the region of imagination. Had you obtained possession of this jewel you might have lived happily during your whole earthly existence.” When the gardener heard these words he tore his robe from top to bottom, strewed the ashes of repentance upon his head, and the brambles of confusion and uneasiness sprouted in the wilderness of his heart. As he looked to the right and the left how he might again get hold of the little bird, it flew to a high tree and said: “Having now by my cunning escaped from your grasp, I shall take care not to fall into it again. Do not flatter yourself that you will get hold of me a second time.” The gardener began to weep and heaved every moment deep sighs from the bottom of his heart, but the little bird said jeeringly: “It is a pity that the name of man should be applied to a silly fellow like yourself. I just communicated to you three maxims, all of which you have already forgotten. I advised you not to be deceived by mean and uncongenial persons;—why, then, have you believed my words and set me free? I farther told you not to believe impossibilities;—then why do you put faith in my words, seeing that nothing could be more absurd than the idea of a weak little bird like myself having in its body a gem as large as a duck’s egg? Lastly, I advised you not to repent of anything which is irreparable, nevertheless you now moan and lament.” After uttering these words the little bird disappeared from the sight of the gardener.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

HATIM TAÏ AND THE BENEVOLENT LADY—p. 46.

This story seems to have been written down from recollection of some of the incidents in the Persian Romance which purports to recount the adventures of the renowned Hatim et-Ta’í, the generous Arab chief—a work of uncertain authorship or date. It was probably written about the end of the 17th or beginning of the 18th century, as the MS. copy used by Dr. Duncan Forbes for his English translation, published in 1830, which he procured in 1824, he considered to be at least a hundred years old. The opening of our version—if indeed such it may be styled—is absurdly inconsistent with all that is traditionally recorded of Hatim. This is how the incident of Hatim and the Darvesh is related in a Persian story-book, according to Dr. Jonathan Scott’s rendering in his _Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters from the Arabic and Persian_, published in 1800, p. 251:

Hatim had a large storehouse having 70 entrances, at each of which he used to bestow alms on the poor. After his death his brother, who succeeded him, wished to imitate his great example, but his mother dissuaded him from such an attempt, saying: “My son, it is not in thy nature.” He would not attend to her advice, upon which she one day, having disguised herself as a mendicant, came to one of the doors, where her son relieved her; she went to another door and was relieved once more; she then went to a third door, when her son said: “I have given thee twice already, and yet thou importunest me again.” “Did I not tell thee, my son,” said the mother, discovering herself, “that thou couldst not equal the liberality of thy brother? I tried him as I have tried thee, and he relieved me at each of the 70 doors without asking me a question; but I knew thy nature and his. When I suckled thee, and one nipple was in thy mouth, thou didst always hold thy hand upon the other, but thy brother the contrary.”

* * * * *

It is quite ludicrous to represent Hatim as setting out for China to see a lady who was declared by a wandering darvesh to be far more liberal than himself. From the following abstract of the Romance—which begins where our story ends—it will be seen that Hatim was actuated by nobler motives in undertaking his several adventures. The opening of the romance is reproduced almost in full from Forbes’ translation.

ABSTRACT OF THE ROMANCE OF HATIM TAÏ.

In the kingdom of Khurasan, during the reign of Kardán Sháh, there lived a worthy merchant, of great dignity, named Burzakh, who was on intimate terms with the king. He died, leaving an only daughter as his heir, twelve years of age, and the king took her under his protection, saying: “She is my daughter.” Husn Bánú esteemed her wealth as no better than sand, and she began to distribute it in charity. One day a darvesh, attended by forty slaves[261] passed her house while she was seated in her balcony. He was the king’s spiritual guide. Husn Bánú sent a servant to invite him to an entertainment at her house, and he promised to come the next day. She prepared for an offering to him nine suits of silken garments, embroidered with gold, and seven trays of pure solid gold and baskets of fruit. The pride of this darvesh was such that he would not touch the earth when he walked, but had his path paved with bricks of gold and silver, and on these alone he placed his feet. On entering the house of Husn Bánú he was presented with trays full of gold and silver. He was amazed at the display of wealth, and resolved that very night to seize the treasure. Accordingly he and his forty slaves broke into the house, killed such as resisted them, and carried off all the treasure. Husn Bánú and her nurse, concealed in the lattice, saw the thieves and knew them. Next day, she complained to the king that the darvesh had robbed her house. This the king refused to believe, calling the darvesh the most holy man of the age; but she declared that he was the fiend of the age. Upon this the king in a rage ordered Husn Bánú and her attendants to be stoned to death, as a warning to others. But the chief minister reminded him that she was the daughter of Burzakh the merchant, and that by putting her to death he would estrange the hearts of his subjects. So the king spared her life, but caused her to be expelled from the city.

In the desert, under a shady tree, Husn Bánú and her old nurse fell asleep; and in a dream a man appeared to Husn Bánú, and told her that beneath that tree was buried the treasure of the seven regions, hidden there by the King of Truth, for her sake, and she was to arise and take possession thereof. “I am a woman,” she replied, “and how can I bring it out of the earth?” The apparition said: “Dig the earth with a little spade: let the means be applied by thee, and God will grant success. Moreover, no one is able forcibly to deprive thee of the treasure. Arise and build a city on this spot.” Husn Bánú having told of her dream to her nurse, they both set to work and dug with a piece of wood, when instantly they saw a pit full of yellow gold, chests full of jewels, cups full of rubies, and costly pearls the size of ducks’ eggs. Husn Bánú rendered thanks to the Most High, then giving some gold to her nurse desired her to return to the city and fetch food and raiment, architects and labourers. Just then her foster-brother, in a mendicant’s garb, passed by, and he recognised her. Telling him how God had given her wealth again, she requested him to bring thither his relations.

The foster-brother soon returned with a builder named Mu’amír. She bids him begin to build a city, but he explains that the king’s permission must be first obtained. So Husn Bánú dresses herself in man’s apparel, and takes for a present a cup full of rubies and a casket full of brilliant jewels. She gives valuable gifts to the king’s officers, representing herself as a merchant newly arrived from abroad and desirous of offering presents to the king. His majesty is astonished to see the priceless gifts and asks: “Sir, whence art thou?” She replies that her father was a merchant of Irán, who died at sea; that she was an orphan and without kindred; had heard of his good qualities; had pitched tents in a tract of desert, and desired leave to build a city there. The king presents her with a dress of honour and adopts her as his son; and suggests that she should rather build her city near the capital and call it Sháhábád (_i.e._ king’s city). But Husn Bánú prefers the desert, so the king gives her the required permission.

The city was built in about two years, and Husn Bánú visited the king once every month. One day he tells her that he is about to visit his darvesh and prevails on her to accompany him. She invites the darvesh to her house, and on his consenting she observes: “But my house is far distant, and in the capital there is the unoccupied house of Burzakh the merchant.” The king makes it over to her as a free gift. Finding her father’s house has fallen to decay, she has it repaired and furnished splendidly. On the day appointed the darvesh came, and he declined the jewels offered to him by Husn Bánú, who had also displayed vast wealth throughout the apartment; and even at the banquet he pretended that he could not partake of dainty dishes. When the darvesh and his attendants had taken their leave, Husn Bánú caused all the golden dishes, etc. to be left as at the banquet, and warned the captain of the watch that she had reason to fear being robbed. At night the darvesh and his forty slaves entered the house, and having tied up the valuables in bundles were about to be off with their plunder—the darvesh himself carrying a cup full of rubies in his hand—when the night watch rushed in, seized and secured the robbers, and laid them in prison. Next day when the king opened his court Husn Bánú appeared,[262] and the kutwál brought the prisoners, each with his bundle of booty hanging from his neck, and made his report. The king thought the leader of the gang resembled a certain darvesh. Thereupon Husn Bánú told her story, and the king ordered all the robbers to be instantly put to death. Her father’s property, of which she had been formerly robbed, was found in the house of the darvesh, and she presented it all to the king. Soon after this occurrence the king visited Husn Bánú at Sháhábád, and she gave him much gold; then pointing out the source of her wealth desired him to cause his attendants to convey it to his own treasury. But when they began to handle the gold, it turned into serpents and dragons, which convinced the king that it was devoted to her sole use. She built a house for the entertainment of travellers, each of whom received a handsome present on leaving, and the fame of her generosity was noised abroad.

* * * * *

Husn Bánú, being young, beautiful, and passing rich, had of course many suitors for her hand in marriage, and she one day consulted with her nurse as to the best means of securing herself from the importunity of worldly men. The nurse said she had seven questions (or tasks), which Husn Bánú should propose to every suitor, and he who complied with the terms which they embraced should be her husband, to which she agreed. Her fame being spread far and wide, Prince Munir, the son of the king of Kharizm, sent a painter to draw her portrait, which he did from the reflection of her face in a vessel full of water[263] and brought it to the prince, who on seeing it became quite frantic from love, and that same night he set out privily for Sháhábád. Obtaining an interview with Husn Bánú and declaring his passion, she replied: “You must first answer me seven questions. There is a man who constantly exclaims: ‘_What I once saw I long to see a second time_.’ Inform me where he lives and what he saw, and then I will put the second question.” The prince takes his leave and wanders about all sad at heart. He is met by Hatim Taï, who learns from him the cause of his evident sorrow, and undertakes to perform the task for him. Having entertained the prince for three days, Hatim takes him back to Sháhábád, and they go into the caravanserai there; but Hatim refusing both the food and the gold always presented to travellers, he is taken before Husn Bánú, who asks him the reason of this strange conduct. Hatim only desires to look at her face. She tells him that he must first bring her the solution of seven questions, to which Hatim agrees, on the condition that she would become at his disposal in the event of his succeeding, which condition was at once written and signed and confirmed by witnesses. Then Hatim, leaving the love-struck prince at the caravanserai, sets out to obtain an answer to Husn Bánú’s _First Question_.

* * * * *

After many surprising adventures, Hatim at length reaches a desert where an old man is crying: “_What I once saw I long to see a second time_,” and learns from him that once he was walking on the border of a lake, when he saw a damsel who took him by the hand and leaped with him into the water, whereupon he found himself in a magnificent garden and beheld a lovely female form closely veiled; and on venturing to raise the veil he was instantly struck to the ground, and opening his eyes found himself in that desert, where he had ever since wandered about, restless and forlorn, wishing to see that beauteous fairy once more. Hatim—for whom nothing was too difficult, for he had all sorts of talismans—conducts the old man to the fairy, after which he returns with the required information to Husn Bánú.

* * * * *

His _Second Adventure_ is to ascertain why a man has above his door these words: “_Do good, and cast it on the water_;” who he is, and where his house is situated. In the course of this expedition he performs three additional tasks in order to obtain for another distracted lover the daughter of a merchant for his wife, the second of which is: Who is the man that cries every Friday and why does he cry: “_I have done nothing that will benefit me this night_”? Hatim comes to a sand-hill (having been directed to the spot by the grateful inhabitants of a town, whose lives he had saved by slaying a man-eating monster), and hears the voice. As he advances he discovers a number of the dead rising out of their graves, with angelic countenances and apparelled in splendid robes—all save one, who was covered with dust and ashes and sat on the cold ground, while the others sat on thrones drinking nectar, and never gave him to drink thereof. This wight sighed heavily and exclaimed: “_Alas, I have not done that which might benefit me this night!_” He tells Hatim that he was a merchant and those around him had been his servants. He was a great miser, but his servants fed the hungry and clothed the naked. On a journey a gang of robbers attacked and murdered him and all his followers. “Here they rest as martyrs—_they_ are crowned with glory, while I am plunged in misery. In the capital of China, my native country, are my grandchildren living in abject poverty. In a certain chamber of my house is buried an immense treasure, of which no living man has knowledge.” Hatim inquires whether it was possible for him to minister to his relief. “Proceed to the capital of China,” says the miser’s shade, “and find out my house. My name is Yúsuf, and in my day I was well known in all parts of the city. Seek my descendants; tell them of the treasure; divide it into four equal portions; bestow one portion on my grandchildren, and the other three on the poor of the city; then perhaps my case may be ameliorated.” Hatim goes at once to the capital of China, but before he is allowed to enter he must answer three questions put to every stranger by the governor’s daughter. Of course Hatim gives correct solutions of the enigmas, and then complies with the directions of the miser’s ghost.

He now addresses himself seriously to the solution of the Second Question of Husn Bánú, but he has many wondrous experiences before he comes at length to the bank of a large river, on which is a lofty mansion of stone, and over the door is written the motto: “_Do good, and cast it on the water_.” Ushered by attendants into the house, Hatim sees a venerable man of a hundred years seated upon a throne, who receives him with great courtesy and causes him to be supplied with refreshments. When Hatim asks the meaning of the motto over the door, the old man relates his history: In his youth he was a great robber, yet every day he made two large loaves mixed with sweet oil and sugar, which he threw into the river, saying: “This I give away, to propitiate Heaven.” One day, continues the old robber, “I was seized with a sickness and I thought a man grasped me by the hand and pointing to the infernal regions said: ‘There is the place destined for thee.’ But two youths, divinely fair, came up and laid hold of me, saying: ‘We will not permit this man to be cast into hell, sinful though he has been. His future state is in Paradise, and thither let us carry him.’” They conveyed him accordingly to the regions of bliss, and an angel of exalted rank telling them that he had a hundred years yet to live, they brought him back to his house, and explained that they were the two loaves he was wont to cast into the water for fishes to feed on. His health was at once restored and he made two loaves as before. When he went to cast them into the water he found a hundred dínars, which he took up and carried to the village, where he caused it to be proclaimed that such a sum of money had been found, but no one came to claim it. Next day when he went to the river with the two loaves he found another hundred dínars, and this continued till the eve of the eleventh day, when a man appeared to him in the visions of the night and said: “Servant of the Almighty, thy two loaves have pleaded thy cause in heaven: the merciful Creator has forgiven thy sins. The dínars which thou receivest are for thy subsistence, and what is superfluous do thou bestow in charity.” Since then the old robber had built that mansion and written the motto over the door, and every day when he went to throw the loaves into the river he found a hundred dínars.[264]

* * * * *

Hatim returns with this story to Husn Bánú, and she forthwith despatches him on his _Third Adventure:_ “There is a man who constantly cries: ‘_Injure no one; if you do, evil will overtake you_.’ Find out where that man lives, what injury he has done, and what evil has overtaken him.” After having performed a difficult task on behalf of a despairing lover whom he met on his way, Hatim at length, aided by a band of fairy troops, arrives at the outskirts of Himyar, where he hears a voice crying these words, and discovers a blind man confined in a cage, which is suspended from a branch of a tree. Hatim having promised to mend his condition and relieve him, the blind man related his history, as follows:

“I am by occupation a merchant, and my name is Hamír. When I became of age, my father had finished the building of this city, and he called the same after my name. Shortly after my father departed on a sea voyage and left me in charge of the city. I was a free-hearted and social young man, and so in a short time expended all the property left under my care by my father. Thus I became surrounded with poverty and want; and as I knew that my father had hidden treasures somewhere in his house I resolved to discover them if possible. I searched everywhere, but found nothing; and, to complete my woe, I received the news of my father’s death, the ship in which he sailed being wrecked.

“One day as I was sauntering, mournful and dejected, through the bazár, I espied a learned man who cried out: ‘If any one has lost his money by theft or otherwise, my knowledge of the occult sciences enables me to recover the same, but on condition that I receive one fourth of the amount.’ When I heard this seasonable proclamation, I immediately approached the man of science, and stated to him my sad condition and how I had been reduced from affluence to poverty. The sage undertook to restore my wealth, and above all to discover the treasures concealed in my father’s house. I conducted him to the house and showed him every apartment, which he carefully examined one after another. At length by his art he discovered the stores we were in search of; and when I saw the gold and silver and other valuables, which exceeded calculation, the demon of fraud entered my heart, and I refused to fulfil my promise of giving a fourth of the property to the man of wisdom. I offered him only a few small pieces of silver; instead of accepting which, he stood for a few moments in silent meditation, and with a look of scorn said: ‘Do I thus receive the fourth part of your treasure, which you agreed to give me? Base man, of what perjury are you guilty!’ On hearing this I became enraged, and having struck him several blows on the face I expelled him from my house. In a few days, however, he returned, and so far ingratiated himself into my confidence, that we became intimate friends; and night and day he displayed before my sight the various hidden treasures contained within the bowels of the earth. One day I asked him to instruct me in this wonderful science, to which he answered that no instruction was requisite. ‘Here,’ said he, ‘is a composition of surma, and whoever applies the same to his eyes, to him will all the wealth of this world become visible.’[265] ‘Most learned sir,’ I replied, ‘if you will anoint my eyes with this substance, I promise to share with you the half of all such treasures as I may discover.’ ‘I agree,’ said my friend: ‘meanwhile let us retire to the desert, where we shall be free from interruption.’

“We immediately set out, and when we arrived here I was surprised at seeing this cage, and asked my companion whose it was. I received for answer, that it belonged to no one. In short, we both sat down at the foot of this tree, and the sage, having produced the surma from his pocket, began to apply it to my eyes. But, alas! no sooner had he applied this composition than I became totally deprived of sight. In a voice of sorrow I asked him why he had thus treated me, and he replied: ‘Such is the reward of treachery; and if you wish to recover your sight, you must for some time undergo penance in this cage. You must utter no complaint and you shall exclaim from time to time: “Do no evil to any one; if you do, evil will befall you.”’ I entreated the sage to relieve me, saying: ‘You are a mere mortal like myself, and dare you thus torment a fellow-creature? How will you account for your deeds to the Supreme Judge?’ He answered: ‘This is the reward of your treachery.’ Seeing him inexorable, I begged of him to inform me when and how my sight was to be restored; and he told me, that a noble youth should one day visit me, and to him I was to make known my condition, and farther state that in the desert of Himyar there is a certain herb called the Flower of Light, which the youth was to procure and apply to my eyes, by means of which my sight should be restored.

“It is now three years since he left me in this prison, which, though quite open, I cannot quit. Were I to attempt to leave my confinement, I should feel the most excruciating pain in my limbs, so as not to have the power of moving, and thus I am compelled to remain. One day, shortly after my companion left me, I reflected that I could do nothing for myself while I continued like a bird in this cage, and accordingly resolved to quit it at all hazards; but the moment I was outside of it the pain that seized my whole body almost killed me. I immediately returned to my prison, and have since that time resigned myself to my fate, exclaiming at stated times the words which have attracted your attention. Many people have passed by me, but on learning my condition they left me as they found me.”

When the man in the cage had ended his story, Hatim bade him be of good cheer, for he would at once endeavour to relieve him. By the aid of the fairies who had conducted him thither and now carry him through the air for the space of seven days, he arrives in the desert where the Flowers of Light shine brilliant as lamps on a festival night, diffusing the sweetest perfume far and wide; and, recking naught for the serpents, scorpions, and other beasts of prey which infest the place (for he was guarded by a powerful talisman), he advances and plucks three of the largest and most brilliant flowers. Returning in the same manner as he had come, he reaches the spot where the blind man Hamír is imprisoned. Taking down the cage, he releases the wretched man, compresses the stalk of the flower so that the juice should drop upon his sightless eyeballs, and when this has been repeated three times Hamír opens his eyes, and, seeing Hatim, falls prostrate at his feet with a profusion of thanks.

* * * * *

The _Fourth Adventure_ is: “Who is the man that has this motto over his door: ‘_He who speaks the truth is always tranquil_’; wherein has he spoken the truth, and what degree of tranquility does he enjoy in consequence?” Passing through regions of enchantment, Hatim then comes to a city, and discovers the motto written above the gate of a splendid mansion. He enters and is received graciously by an old man, who entertains him hospitably. Next day he relates his story: He is eight hundred years old. In youth he was a great gambler, and having lost all his substance he became a robber. One night he broke into the king’s palace, entered one of the chambers, where the daughter of the king was sleeping, and seizing all her jewels and a golden lamp that burned beside her he made his escape. He fled to a desert, where he found a gang of thieves dividing their plunder, to whom he showed his own booty, and their avarice was aroused so that they were proceeding to take it from him by force, when a tremendous voice was heard close by, at which they ran off in different directions. Presently a figure appeared before him and demanded: “Who art thou?” He told his story. “’Tis well for thee,” said the figure, “that thou hast related the whole truth; therefore I forgive thy crime, and leave the treasure to thy enjoyment. But swear never to gamble again.” He took the required oath. “Well, keep thy oath, and the years of thy life shall reach nine hundred.” Returning to the city with his plunder, his comrades envied his prosperity, and reported him to the chief of the police, who brought him before the king, to whom he told the whole truth as to the source of his wealth, and the king pardoned him and gave him more gold. Then he wrote that motto over his door.

* * * * *

Hatim’s _Fifth Adventure_ is to bring an account of Mount Nida, whence a voice from time to time proceeds, crying: “Come quickly!” Whereupon one of the citizens in the neighbourhood is seized with an uncontrollable frenzy, rushes away to the mountain and is seen no more. This strange occurrence Hatim learns is the manner in which the inhabitants taste of death: when the doomed person approached a rock it split asunder, and as soon as he had entered the opening it closed behind him and his soul quitted his body.

* * * * *

The _Sixth Adventure_ is to procure Husn Bánú a pearl similar to one she already possesses, which is as large as a duck’s egg. Hatim learns from the conversation of a pair of Nitka birds that their species used to “lay” such pearls once in thirty years, but this faculty had ceased since the days of Solomon; that only two were on the face of the earth now (all others being at the bottom of the sea), one being in the possession of Husn Bánú, the other in the treasury of a fairy, who has an only daughter: he who can tell the history of that pearl (which Hatim has heard from the well-informed birds) shall have her in marriage and the pearl for her dowry. Needless to add that Hatim is successful in his quest, bestows the young fairy on her lover, who had been unable to comply with her father’s condition, and returns with the pearl to Husn Bánú.

* * * * *

Hatim’s _Seventh Adventure_, and the last, is to bring the lady an account of the bath of Badgird—an enchanted palace erected for the preservation of a peerless and priceless diamond by its owner, a powerful magician. The stone is in the body of a parrot, Hatim is told by a bird of the same species before entering the hall, and whoever enters shall never return unless he obtain possession of the gem. He will find a bow and three arrows laid on a sofa in the hall, and must shoot the arrows at the parrot, and if he hit right through its head he will break the spell, but if not, he will, like all others before him, be turned to marble. Nothing daunted, Hatim shoots one arrow, and, missing, he becomes marble up to his knees; the second arrow also missing, he becomes marble up to his middle; but (placing his reliance in God) when he shoots the third arrow it pierces the head of the parrot and it falls lifeless to the ground. This achievement is immediately followed by a storm of wind, thunder, lightning—darkness. And Hatim can see no palace or parrot, but at his feet are the bow and arrow and a diamond of dazzling brilliance. No sooner had Hatim seized the diamond than all the marble statues started into life, being freed from the spell of the enchanter.

Returning to Sháhábád, Hatim presented the diamond to Husn Bánú, and, as he had now fulfilled all her conditions, she was straightway married to Prince Munir, who thus reached the summit of happiness. Hatim then returned to the capital of Yaman, where he was affectionately received by his father and mother, and his arrival was hailed with universal joy, while every house resounded with music and mirth. Shortly after this Hatim’s father resigned the reins of government into his hand and lived in retirement for the remainder of his life, which amounted to twelve years, seven months, and nine days. Hatim reigned long and happily in Yaman.[266]

* * * * *

Such is the substance of the wonderful Adventures of Hatim Taï, though I have necessarily omitted many details and some rather curious incidents: like a tale in the _Arabian Nights_, out of which spring several other tales, each of Hatim’s expeditions led him on to others, which had to be accomplished before he could attain the end for which he originally set out. He undergoes some extraordinary experiences, too, such as being swallowed alive and unhurt by a dragon of such monstrous dimensions that he kept tramping to and fro in its stomach till it was at last obliged, for its internal peace, to eject him and be off; dipping his hand into a lake in order to drink of the waters, and finding it instantly turned into pure silver—where, O where is _that_ lake?—and coming to another, which had the property of restoring the _argentine_ member to flesh and blood; not to speak of the scenes of enchantment, which indeed seem to have been begot of hashish or a like narcotic. With all its absurdities, however, the _morale_ of the romance is excellent: the hero goes about constantly doing good; benevolent towards bird and beast as well as to mankind; feeding the hungry, relieving the distressed, and binding up the broken heart.—This work is still a first favourite among the Persians, who continue to entertain a firm belief in dívs, parís, and many other kinds of spirits, good and evil.

* * * * *

Of the three stories which are interwoven with our tale of Hatim and the Benevolent Lady but one is represented in the Romance, that of the Blind Man, namely, but the details are very different in the two versions.

_The Painter’s Story (p. 53)_

begins with an account of a fight which he witnessed in his garden between a white snake and a black snake, and seeing the former was about to succumb he slew the black snake. This incident also occurs in the Romance, when Hatim is returning from his second expedition, only the magnanimous hero does not kill—or even _scotch_—the black snake: he simply shouts, when it lets go its hold of the other and wriggles off. The white snake then becomes a handsome young man, and tells Hatim that he is the son of a king of the jinn, that the black snake is his father’s slave, and bears a most deadly enmity towards himself, and so forth—an incident found in many Asiatic story-books. The Painter’s subsequent experiences in the subaqueous palace of the king of the jinn do not occur in the romance, though the story is known to several collections, and, introduced by the incident of the two snakes, it is found, as follows, in _Turkish Evening Entertainments_, a translation,[267] by J. P. Brown, of a Turkish story-book entitled _’Ajá’ib el-ma’ásir wa ghara’ib en-nawádir_ (Wonders of Remarkable Incidents and Rarities of Anecdote), by Ahmed ibn Hemden, the Ketkhoda, surnamed Suhaylí (_i.e._ Canopus), who composed it for Murád, the fourth Ottoman sultan, who reigned between A.D. 1623 and A.D. 1640:

In ancient times the sovereign of the country of Sabá was a man called Yeshrah. One day, when this excellent prince was travelling, he came to an extensive plain where were two serpents resembling frightful dragons. One of these was white, the other black. They were entwined around each other in desperate conflict, and the white one had received a wound in a most tender part of its body. The black serpent being thus victorious, the strength of the white one was exhausted; it could move no more, and the black one wreaked its vengeance upon the helpless animal. King Yeshrah, touched with pity, went to the assistance of the white snake, and aided it in its conquered state. He placed a diamond-pointed arrow in his bow, and, taking aim at the black snake, he let fly and instantly killed it. The white snake, thus released, crawled away.

One day the king received a visit from a youth of a handsome exterior, who informed him that he belonged to the race of the jinn, and was the white serpent rescued by him. The youth then made proffers of service to the king, which he declined, upon which he offered the king his sister in marriage. The king, enchanted by her beauty, accepted her, and the marriage took place on the king undertaking to consent to everything which his wife did, were it good or evil. Soon after the birth of his first son, a dog approached the queen, who suddenly cast the child into the dog’s mouth, and the dog ran away with it, to the king’s great grief. Their next child, a girl, the queen cast into a brazier, where the infant was immediately consumed. The king was now exceedingly afflicted; but the birth of a second daughter, who was so delicately beautiful on account of her resembling the húrís of Paradise that she was called Bilkís, somewhat reconciled him to his loss. The king implored her not to treat this child as she had done the two others, for which she severely rebuked him.

Soon after this a powerful enemy attacked the king, and his own vazír, secretly allying himself with the enemy, poisoned the provisions designed for the king’s army. The queen destroyed the provisions, at which the king in wrath demanded her reason. The queen explained the affair to her husband, and gave the remaining bread to an animal which fell dead after eating it. She then said that the king having broken the condition made on his marriage with her, all intercourse must now cease between them, and informed him that the son thrown to the dog was still alive, and had been brought up by a nurse in that form, and that the daughter was also in perfect health, nursed by the fire. Beseeching him to be mindful of their daughter Bilkís, who should succeed to the throne and become a great and illustrious queen, and promising to send to his succour an army of jinn-soldiers, she disappeared from the king’s sight for ever. The troops of jinn came to his assistance as promised, routed the enemy’s forces, and restored the king to his throne. But still he was afflicted by the loss of his wife. At length the fatal moment arrived, and he died; and his daughter Bilkís succeeded him on the throne, and her history has been written elsewhere in a detailed manner.

* * * * *

Thus, if we may place any credit in the foregoing story, the thrice-renowned Queen of Sheba was jinn-born: no wonder, therefore, if she was a miracle of beauty and wisdom! It does not appear, however, why her fairy-mother did not dispose of her soon after she was born, in the same extraordinary manner as she “made away” with her previous babes.—Regarding the notion that when a human being unites with one of a supernatural order there are certain conditions always imposed by the latter, the breaking of which must result in their separation, generally temporary, I take leave to refer the reader to my _Popular Tales and Fictions_, vol. i, p. 212 ff.

In more or less different forms the same story is found in the following works: in _Les Mille et un Jours_, which purports to have been translated, by Petis de la Croix, from a Persian collection entitled _Hazár ú Yek Rúz_, the Thousand and one Days, by a darvesh named Mukhlis, of Isfahán, from whom M. Petis obtained a copy in 1675, where it is entitled “Histoire du Roi Ruzvanschad et de la Princesse Cheheristani,” but in this version the king’s fairy-wife leaves him only for a time; in a Turkish story-book, entitled _Al-Faraj ba’d al-Shiddah_, Joy after Distress, a work written not later than the 15th century;[268] and in a collection described by Dr. Chas. Rieu in his _Catalogue of Persian MSS. in the British Museum_, vol. ii, p. 759, Or. 237, which has no specific title, the compiler, whose poetical name was Hubbí, merely calling his work, _Hikáyát-i’Agíb ú Gharíb_, Wonderful and Strange Tales. In this last work, the MS. of which is unfortunately imperfect, the final story, No. 34, relates how a king of Yaman, while hunting, saw two snakes, a white one and a black one, engaged in deadly combat. He sends an attendant to kill the black snake and rescue the white one, which was half dead; which being done, he causes the rescued snake to be laid down beside a spring of water, under the shade of a tree. The snake rallies, and after a while crawls away. When the king is asleep at night, the wall of his chamber suddenly opens and a fair youth appears. “I am,” says he, “the king of the parís (fairies). You rescued me from the black snake. I am now come to requite your kind act. If you wish it, I will make you rich with many treasures.” No more of the MS. remains,[269] but it is not unlikely that the sequel was similar to that of the Turkish story cited above.

* * * * *

The battle between the two snakes, which is found so often reproduced in Arabian and Persian story-books—though I cannot recollect having met with it in any Indian collection—seems reflected in two incidents in the Voyage of Saint Brandan. One day the saint and his companions discover a monstrous sea-serpent on the surface of the water, exhaling fire from its nostrils, as it were the roaring flame of a furnace; and while the pious voyagers could not measure its length they were more successful with its breadth, which was “full fifteen feet, I trow”; presently a monster of the same species appears, and a terrific combat takes place between the two, until one is torn by his antagonist into _three_ pieces, when the victor sinks down into the sea. After this they see a deadly conflict in the air between a griffin and a dragon.—It is well known to students of the history of popular fictions that many Eastern tales and incidents had found their way into Western literature long before the collection commonly but incorrectly called the _Arabian Nights_, in its existing form, was compiled.

Among the countless absurdities abounding in the _Toldoth Jeshu_, a scurrilous “life” of Jesus Christ of Jewish invention—the text of which, with a Latin translation, is given at the end of the second volume of Wagenseil’s _Tela Ignea Satanæ_, 1681—is an aërial conflict between Jeshu and Rabbi Judas before Queen Helena: “And when Jeshu had spoken the incommunicable Name,[270] there came a wind and raised him between heaven and earth. Thereupon Judas spake the same Name, and the wind raised him also between heaven and earth. And they flew, both of them, around in the regions of the air, and all who saw it marvelled. Judas then spake again the Name, and seized Jeshu and sought to cast him to the earth. But Jeshu also spake the Name, and sought to cast Judas down, and they strove one with the other.” Ultimately Judas prevails and casts Jeshu to the ground, and the elders seize him; his power leaves him; and he is subjected to the tauntings of his captors. Being rescued by his disciples, he hastened to the Jordan; and when he had washed therein his power returned, and with the Name he again wrought his former miracles.[271] This “story”—to employ the term in its nursery sense—strongly resembles the equally apocryphal legend of the aërial contest at Rome between St. Peter and Simon Magus, in which the apostle overthrew the magician.

_The Washerman’s Story (p. 58)_

calls for but slight remark. The fairies who alighted in succession on the tree in the form of doves, and putting off their feather-dress appeared as the most beautiful damsels, belong, of course, to the Bird-Maiden class, and the Washerman, by his own showing, did not deserve to possess any one of them. Could he have decided—but perhaps the trial was too much for him—he might have secured even the last and most bewitching of the three, by taking possession of her feather-robe, when she would have no alternative but to follow him wheresoever he might go: but evidently he did not know this. (See the chapter on “Bird-Maidens” in my _Popular Tales and Fictions_, vol. i. p. 182 ff.)

_The Blind Man’s Story (p. 60)_

differs considerably from its representative in the Romance, the story of the blind man Hamír in the cage (_ante_ p. 464ff.); and it is also observable that in our story Hatim does nothing to mitigate the poor man’s wretchedness. Both versions agree in treasure being found in a dwelling house; but in our story it is the geomancer who is the blind man, and his eyes are blinded in mistake by a vindictive neighbour of the friend whom he thought to entrap;—while in the other story it is the man in whose house the treasure was discovered who is blinded by the geomancer, in revenge of the ill-treatment he had received at his hands; and it is by the application of _surma_ to his eyes, by means of which he expected to behold all the hidden treasure of the world, that he is deprived of sight. The analogous tale in our common version of the _Arabian Nights_, of the Blind Man Baba Abdullah (it has not yet been found in any Arabic text of the collection), is wholly different in all its details until it reaches the catastrophe, when the greedy cameleer, after getting back from the darvesh all his share of the treasure, returns to request the box of salve, which, after having had applied to his left eye and thereby been enabled to see all concealed treasure, he insists—in spite of the repeated warning of the darvesh—on being also applied to his right eye, whereupon he instantly becomes stone-blind. Widely as the three stories differ one from the other, in details, however, it is very evident, I think, that they have been independently adapted from a common source.

* * * * *

The very climax of absurdity is surely reached by the author of our version of the story of Hatim when he represents the _benevolent_ Lady as saying (p. 50) that she is so jealous of the wide-spread fame of Hatim for liberality that she wishes him to be killed; and when, on his return, she reproaches him for not having brought her Hatim’s head, he replies that he is himself Hatim and that his head is at her disposal, whereupon the lady, struck with such magnanimity, at once consents to marry him.

According to tradition, an enemy of Hatim despatched one of his officers to slay him and bring his head. When he reached the encampments of the tribe of Ta’í, he was courteously greeted by an Arab, and invited into his tent, where he was treated most hospitably; and in the morning he told his host that he had been sent thither by his master to slay Hatim and bring back his head. The host smilingly replied: “I am Hatim; and if my head will gratify your master, smite it off without delay.” The man hastened away in confusion; and returning to his master told him of his adventure, and the enemy of Hatim ever afterwards loved and esteemed him.—This seems to be the tradition adapted so incongruously by our author.

* * * * *

The idea of our tale of Hatim and the Benevolent Lady may have been partly taken from the Story of the Third Darvesh in the Persian work, _Kissa-i Chehár Darvesh_ (Romance of the Four Darveshes), an anonymous book, of uncertain date,[272] where the narrator, a Persian prince, tells how he tried to imitate the generosity of Hatim, by causing a great palace to be erected with four gates, at each of which he distributed gold and silver to all comers. One day a wandering darvesh receives money at each of the gates in succession, and then begins to beg again at the first gate, upon which the prince upbraids him for his greediness, and the darvesh retorts, as in our story, that there is a lady to whose liberality there is absolutely no bound. The prince learns that this generous lady is the princess of Basra, and donning the robe of a darvesh he sets out for that city, where he is sumptuously entertained for several days by the servants of the princess, after which he writes her a letter, declaring his rank and offering her marriage. He is told that the princess has resolved to marry only him who should bring her the explanation of the singular conduct of a youth in the city of Namrúz who appeared once a month riding on a bull, carrying a vase of gold and jewels in his hand, which he smashed in the market-place, and then smote off the head of one of his slaves, immediately afterwards riding away again, foaming at the mouth. The royal mendicant undertakes to ascertain the cause of the youth’s madness (he proves to be in love with a fairy, like the Painter in our tale), and before setting out for Namrúz is admitted into the private chamber of the princess, who is concealed behind a curtain, where a slave-girl relates the history of her mistress: how she was one of seven daughters of a king, and was driven out of the palace because she would not acknowledge that she derived her good fortune from her father, but maintained that it was from God. In the wilderness she meets a darvesh, and discovers underground immense treasures, and so forth.—This story of the princess of Basra is one of the numerous parallels or analogous tales cited by my friend Mr. E. Sidney Hartland in a very able and interesting paper on the “Outcast Child” cycle, in the _Folk-Lore Journal_, 1886, vol. iv, p. 308 ff.

STORY OF PRINCE KASHARKASHA.

The latter part of this tale—where the merchant Sadullah befriends the imprudent prince, bestows his own wife on him, afterwards becomes ruined in fortune, and visits the now prosperous sovereign, on whom he had lavished such favours (pp. 89-97)—has long been current in Europe as well as in the East, in various forms. It occurs in the collection of Persian Tales translated into French by Petis de la Croix, under the title of _Les Mille et un Jours_ (first published in 1710-12, 5 vols.), where it is entitled: “Histoire de Nasiraddole, roi de Mousel; d’Abderrahmane, marchand de Baghdad; et de la belle Zeineb,” and it is to the following effect:

A rich young merchant named Abd er-Rahman, meets with a stranger in a confectioner’s shop in Baghdád, and the two soon become very intimate friends. After some time the stranger informs the merchant that he must now return to Mosúl. The merchant says that he himself may soon have to visit that town, and begs to know his friend’s name, so that he may be able to inquire for him there. The stranger bids him to come and see him at the palace. Abd er-Rahman goes to Mosúl on business and discovers that the stranger is no less a personage than King Nasír ad-Dole, who is delighted to see him and entertains him in the palace for a whole year, after which he returns to Baghdád, the king parting with him very reluctantly. Arrived in Baghdád, the merchant regales his friends and acquaintances in the most sumptuous manner, and purchases a number of slave-girls, with one of whom, a Circassian beauty called Zaynib, he becomes greatly enamoured. The king of Mosúl comes again to Baghdád, without attendants, and is the honoured and cherished guest of his friend the merchant Abd er-Rahman. One day the king boasts of some beautiful slave-girls in his haram in Mosúl, when the merchant, inflamed with wine, leads the king into an inner apartment, magnificently furnished, where are seated thirty lovely damsels, adorned profusely with the rarest diamonds. The king is perfectly amazed on beholding the peerless beauty of Zaynib, and on the following day, in a melancholy tone, informs his friend that he intends returning at once to Mosúl. “Has your majesty aught to complain of, that you have formed this sudden resolution?” the merchant inquired anxiously. “All my complaint,” replied the king, “is of my destiny”; but when he is about to depart his friend learns from him that he is desperately in love with the fair Zaynib, and then the king takes his leave and sets out for Mosúl. Abd er-Rahman then reflects that he should not have shown Zaynib to the king, who must now lead a sorrowful life. At length he resolves to send the damsel to his royal friend, and, having ordered her litter to be prepared, sends for Zaynib and tells her that she does not now belong to him, but to the king of Mosúl, whom she saw yesterday;—“he is in love with you, and is himself lovely.” Zaynib bursts into tears and exclaims: “Ah, you no longer love me—some other damsel has taken your heart from me!” “Not so,” says he. “I swear that I have never loved you so much as I do at this moment.” “Why, then, do you part with me?” “Because I cannot bear the thought of my friend’s sorrow.” So a number of attendants are sent with Zaynib to Mosúl, but the king had arrived there before them. When she is ushered into the palace, the king perceives that she is sorrowful, and that his presence is distasteful to her—evidently she cannot forget the merchant.

Meanwhile Abd er-Rahman falls into a languishing condition, and one day the grand vazír sends officers to apprehend him on a trumped-up charge of having spoken disrespectfully of the Khalíf in his cups, made by two envious courtiers, his enemies. The merchant’s house is razed, his wealth is confiscated, and he is to be put to death the next day. But the gaoler, whom the merchant had formerly befriended, takes pity on him and secretly sets him at liberty. When the vazír learns of this he sends for the gaoler and tells him that if the merchant is not re-captured in the course of twenty-four hours he will certainly suffer in his place. The gaoler answers that he believes the merchant to be innocent of the crime charged against him. In the meantime Abd er-Rahman is concealed in a friend’s house and the police are scouring the country in search of him, and during their absence from the city he escapes and takes the road to Mosúl. When he enters the palace there, the king simply orders his treasurer to give him two hundred gold sequins. The poor merchant is surprised that the king should bestow such a paltry sum on him, after the sacrifice he had made by presenting the fair Zaynib to his majesty. He takes the money, however, and tries all means of increasing it by trade. At the end of six months he returns to the king and informs him that he has lost fifty of the two hundred sequins by his unfortunate speculations. The king bids his treasurer give him fifty more sequins, again to the surprise of the merchant, who departs once more on a trading expedition, but this time he gains a hundred sequins and returning to Mosúl he acquaints the king of his success. “Misfortunes are contagious,” said the king. “I had heard of your disgrace and dared not receive you into my palace again, fearing that your ill luck should affect me and put it out of my power to assist you when your star should look more favourably on you. But now you shall live with me.” Next day the king tells the merchant that he purposes giving him a good wife. “Alas,” says he, “I cannot think of any woman after my beloved Zaynib.” But the king insists, and that same night the merchant is agreeably surprised to find that the wife given him by his royal friend is none other than Zaynib, whom the king has all along regarded as a sister. Not long after this Abd er-Rahman learns that one of his accusers has confessed, and he goes to Baghdád and recovers part of his wealth, and passes the rest of his life at the court of Mosúl.[273]

* * * * *

In another form the tale of the Two Friends is found in the _Disciplina Clericalis_ of Peter Alphonsus, a Spanish Jew, of the twelfth century, whence it was probably taken into the _Gesta Romanorum_, the celebrated mediæval monkish collection of “spiritualised” stories for the use of preachers (page 196 of Herrtage’s edition, published by the Early English Text Society). It is also found in Boccaccio’s _Decameron_ (Day x, novelle 8); and Lydgate, the monk of Bury, of the fifteenth century, turned it into verse under the title of “Fabula duorum mercatorum,” beginning:

“In Egipt whilom as I rede and fynde”

(Harleian MS. 2251, lf. 56, preserved in the British Museum); and it forms one of the _Fabliaux_ in Le Grand’s collection, of which this is a translation:

Two merchants had been for a long time connected in business. They had never seen each other, one residing at Baldak [Baghdád?] and the other in Egypt; notwithstanding which, from their long correspondence and mutual services, they entertained a reciprocal esteem and friendship as if they had passed their lives together. The Syrian merchant at last became very desirous to have an interview with his correspondent, and set out on his journey with that intention, after having apprised his friend of it. The Egyptian rejoiced heartily at the news, and on his friend’s approach went out several leagues to meet him. On his arrival he lodged the Syrian in his own house, and, making a display of his riches and all that he possessed, told him that everything was at his disposal. In order to amuse his guest, he invited several persons successively to his table. For a week together there was nothing but feasting and pleasure; but in the midst of their enjoyment the traveller was so struck with the beauty of a lady who had one day been present that he fell dangerously ill. Immediately all the best physicians of the country were sent for. At first, neither by his pulse nor by any other symptom could they discover the nature of the merchant’s disorder; but at length by his profound melancholy they conjectured that love was the cause. The Egyptian on hearing this conjured him to disclose his secret, that the remedy might if possible be found. His guest, thus called upon and pressed to declare it, acknowledged that he was in love and that without possession of the object of his affection he could not endure life. “But where to find her I know not. I am wholly unacquainted with her name and abode. My eyes beheld her once, to my great misfortune, but day and night her image is present and without her I shall certainly die.” He then fainted away. For several hours he continued in this trance, and was even thought dead. Awaking at length, he cast his eyes about the room to discover the object of his passion, but in vain. She was not among the persons present. His friend at last, in order to obtain for him, if possible, a sight of his beloved, thought of bringing successively to his bedside all the ladies who had been invited to the feasts, or whom he could have seen since his arrival in the country. But she was not of the number. Ultimately the people of the house recollected that there was in an inner chamber a young lady whom the Egyptian merchant loved to distraction, and had brought up with the greatest care, intending her soon to be his wife. She was by his desire introduced. Instantly on seeing her the Syrian exclaimed: “That is she to whom I am to owe either my life or my death!” The Egyptian merchant demurred for some time; but, with a heroic resolution sacrificing his passion to his friendship, he presented the lady to his guest. He not only consented to their union but even insisted on giving her a marriage portion. He made her presents of rich stuffs and money, and himself took charge of the nuptials, to which he did not fail to invite minstrels, who sang pantomimic songs and enlivened the feast with all manner of gaiety.

When all these carousals were ended the merchant proceeded to take leave of his generous host and to return into his own country. His friends on his arrival pressed forward to congratulate him. There was a fresh celebration of the nuptials with rejoicings which lasted for a fortnight, after which the merchant and his spouse lived happily together. But in the meantime sad misfortunes occurred to the Egyptian merchant: he met with such losses that he was entirely ruined. In this deplorable situation he thought of having recourse to his friend at Baldak, and determined to visit him there, reckoning on his gratitude for the eminent services which he had rendered him. He was obliged to make this long journey on foot and to suffer both hunger and thirst, to endure both heat and cold, extremes of misery to which he had hitherto been unaccustomed. At length after much fatigue he arrived about nightfall at Baldak. But at the moment when he was about to enter the city the state of wretchedness in which he was excited in him a feeling of shame at proceeding farther. He thought that if he presented himself in the dark to his friend in that miserable state he would not recollect him, and therefore he judged it better to wait till morning. With this intention he entered a temple which was hard by. No sooner did he find himself in this dismal, lonely place than a multitude of melancholy ideas assailed him. “Good God!” cried he, “to what a wretched condition has thy will reduced me! Alas, my former affluence renders it still more miserable. I had all that I could desire, and now I find myself an outcast, without property and without friends! Surely in such circumstances death is preferable to existence.” While he was speaking thus to himself he suddenly heard a great noise in the temple. A murderer had taken flight thither and some of the citizens were following to seize him. They asked the Egyptian whether he had seen the assassin. He, who wished to die and thus terminate at once his shame and his sufferings, declared himself the guilty person. He was instantly seized, bound, and thrown into prison. The next day he was brought before the judge and being convicted was condemned to the gallows. When the time for the execution arrived a great number of people flocked to the place, and amongst them the friend whose life he had saved and in quest of whom he had left his native country. He had not forgotten the obligation, and luckily he recognised his friend. But what could he do at this juncture to save his life? He could think only of one method, and that was to devote himself for his friend. Having taken this sudden resolution, he exclaimed: “Good people, take care what you are about, and do not be guilty of the sin of punishing an innocent man. It was I who committed the murder.” This declaration astonished the assembly. The execution was suspended, the merchant was arrested, and they began to unloose the stranger. But the real assassin happened to be there, and when he saw them binding the merchant he was seized with remorse. “What!” cried he to himself, “shall this honest man die for my crimes whilst I escape? I cannot escape the vengeance of God! No! I will not charge my conscience with a second offence, but will rather expiate my crime by suffering here than subject myself to the indignation of the Deity, who can punish for ever.” He then made a full confession and was brought before the judges, who, being puzzled at this extraordinary case, referred it to the king, who, no less perplexed than they, sent for the three prisoners, and promising them pardon if they would declare the truth, interrogated them himself. Each then recounted with fidelity what had happened, and the consequence was that they were all three pardoned and discharged. The Syrian went home with his friend, whom he in his turn had had the good fortune to save. He ordered some refreshments to be served up to him, and said: “If you choose to reside here, my friend, I call God to witness that you shall never be in want of anything, but shall be as much master as myself of all I possess. If you prefer returning to your own country, I offer you the half of my wealth, or whatever part you may please to take of it.” The Egyptian declared his desire was rather to return home, and he departed, charged with presents.

* * * * *

Under the title of the “Mirror of Friends,” the Spanish novelist Matias de los Reyes (1634) relates this favourite story, varying the incidents of the _fabliau_ version as above, and with a tragical catastrophe. This is an abstract of Reyes’ tale, following Roscoe’s translation, in his _Spanish Novelists_, ed. 1832, pp. 17-39:

A young man[274] is placed at the university of Bologna, under the guardianship of a friend of his father, named Federico, whose son Lisardo and he at once become most intimate friends. There was so close a resemblance between the two youths in person and features that one was often mistaken for the other. Four years after entering the university, he falls in love with a pretty girl whom he saw seated at a balcony—it is not said how he got introduced to her—and she returns his affection, but insists on their engagement being kept a profound secret. Shortly after this, the father of Laura—such was the sweet name of our youth’s secret _fiancée_—proposes that she should marry Lisardo, to which his father Federico most willingly consents, as the young lady’s family are of high station and very wealthy. This comes like a thunder-clap upon our poor love-sick youth, but he cannot get himself to confess to Lisardo his devoted attachment to Laura. As the time draws near for the marriage he falls dangerously ill—“sick of love”; and if his friend tried to “stay him with flagons and comfort him with apples,” he did so in vain—albeit we have high authority for the efficacy of such remedies. At length Lisardo comes to him one day, and insists upon knowing the secret cause of his illness and melancholy, otherwise their friendship must be at an end. He then confesses his love for Laura and their private betrothal. Lisardo reproaches him for not having told him of this before, since he would willingly sacrifice his life for his friend; but even now he will contrive means whereby his friend should be united to the young lady instead of himself.

On the morning of the marriage-day Lisardo makes his friend dress himself in his wedding-garments, and, as they were so like each other, none present at the ceremony suspected but that it was Lisardo who led the bride to the altar. Next day, at an early hour, the bridegroom goes into Lisardo’s room and receives his hearty congratulations; but now comes the question of how to disclose the affair to Lisardo’s father. After some discussion they go to Federico and confess the deception that had been practised. At first he is very angry but at length consents to explain everything to Laura’s father, which he does accordingly, at the same time stating that the match is quite as good as was intended, and this is ere long confirmed by the receipt of documents from our youth’s father conveying property and money to him. Soon afterwards the loving couple set out for the husband’s home.

Two years pass away, during which Lisardo has not once communicated with his friend, who now goes to Bologna to ascertain how he fares. He finds that Lisardo’s father is dead and himself gone no one knows where. Then he visits all the chief towns and ports of Italy in quest of him, but without success. Entering Naples for the second time, he perceives a large concourse of people in the great square, where there is a scaffold erected, on which he sees a youth with his arms pinioned, and the executioner, sword in hand, by his side. He recognises in the unhappy young man his friend Lisardo, and, breaking through the crowd, rushes on to the scaffold, exclaiming: “This man is innocent—I am the guilty one!” When the tumult caused by this singular scene is somewhat allayed, the chief magistrate orders both to be taken to prison in the meantime, and, as a favour, they are both placed in the same cell. Lisardo reproaches his friend for casting away his life, and he innocent of any crime, but his friend replies that he is convinced that Lisardo is equally innocent, for which Lisardo expresses his gratitude and then proceeds to tell his story. His father died worth little money, although he had a reputation of being very rich, and with a few jewels Lisardo departed from Bologna. As he journeyed he was attacked by a band of robbers, who plundered him and even stripped off his clothes. A humane cottager gave him a ragged coat, and he wandered on, not knowing or caring whither he went. He thought of his friend, but was ashamed to be seen by him in such a plight. After being sick for six months in a public hospital, he resumed his wanderings, and one night took shelter in a cavern. In the morning he was rudely awakened by some peasants, who pointed to the dead body of a man that lay in the cavern, and accused him of the murder. Presently the police came and led him off to prison. At his trial he said nothing in his own defence—for he was weary of life—and he was duly condemned to death. Having heard this sad story, his friend is now more than ever determined to save him by the sacrifice of his own life. But while they are still conversing the cell door is thrown open, and the prison officials inform them that the real murderers of the man have just been captured in a gang of desperadoes, who were discovered to be the same that had robbed Lisardo, his jewels having been found in their possession. The reaction produced by this sudden intelligence proves too much for Lisardo’s shattered frame; and, confessing to his friend that he had from the first loved and had never ceased to love the beauteous Laura, his devoted spirit took its flight from this earth, leaving his friend for ever disconsolate: “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me!”

STORY OF THE UNLUCKY SHOAYB—p. 110ff.

Was there ever, I wonder, another Shoayb besides the hapless fellow of this story? Not only did good fortune actually run after him and he all the while flee from it, as if the pestilence were behind him, but his very presence anywhere was the cause of manifold disasters! If there be not, however, amidst the multitude of the world’s folk-tales an exact parallel to the Story of Shoayb, there is one near akin to it, from Western India, related by M. Putlibai D. H. Wadia, in the _Indian Antiquary_, 1886, p. 221, as follows:

Once upon a time there lived in a certain country a merchant, who was formerly very prosperous, but having suffered great losses in trade, he came to be in such poor circumstances that starvation stared him in the face. As the king of the country knew him well, his wife advised him to go to court, feeling sure that the king would do something for him. The merchant, however, felt reluctant to go to the king as a suitor, but after suffering great privations for a long time, when he saw that there was nothing left for his family but starvation, he made up his mind to follow his wife’s advice, and one morning presented himself at the court, which he found crowded with many persons, who had come there on the same errand as himself. This sight rather unnerved him, and he devoutly hoped the king would not recognise him. When his turn came, however, to be ushered into the royal presence, the king recognised him at once, and asked him what he could do for him. The merchant with great hesitation related his case, and the king, being a very thoughtful man, feared that he would hurt the dignity of one so respectable as the merchant if he gave him pecuniary assistance before so many people. So he requested him to wait till all had left the court, and then going into his private apartments he ordered a water-melon to be brought to him, in which he made a hole, and pouring out its contents, he filled it with gold coins. Then summoning the merchant before him, he gave him the melon and said: “Take this to your family, it is a refreshing fruit, and you will all enjoy it this hot day.” The merchant thanked the king and returned homeward very much grieved at receiving only a water-melon when he expected something more substantial. As he was walking along on his way home, he met two travellers, who were very thirsty and looked wistfully at the melon he was carrying, and, being of a very generous disposition and thinking that they needed the melon more than he did, he gave it to them and walked quickly home empty-handed.

After passing many months of privation and misery, he was persuaded by his wife to go to the king a second time, in the hope of better luck. The king was, however, much surprised at the merchant’s paying him a second visit so soon after the first; but when he heard that he was as poor as before, he thought he had invested in trade the money he had given him and lost it. He therefore filled a water-melon once more with gold coins and presented it to him. The merchant was again disappointed at being sent away with such a trifle, but he nevertheless made his obeisance to the king and returned homewards. This time, however, he resolved not to part with the fruit, knowing that it would be welcome to his starving children. He had not gone very far, however, when he met a beggar who asked alms of him, saying that he was very hungry. The merchant could not resist this appeal, and, having no money, gave the melon to the beggar.

When he reached home his wife was sorely vexed at his bad luck, and wondered very much why the king, who was reputed to be very charitable, should treat her husband so shabbily as to send him away with a melon every time he went into his presence. Being, however, of a persevering nature, she once more persuaded him to go to court and ask the king for help. He accordingly went there and stood in presence of the king as before. But this time the king first asked him to explain what use he had made of the two water-melons he had given him. The merchant related how he had given the first to two travellers who were very thirsty, and the second to a hungry beggar who asked him for alms. The king laughed at the merchant for what he considered his folly, and told him what the two melons contained. He then filled another water-melon with jewels in the merchant’s presence, and gave it to him, admonishing him to be very careful of it. The merchant went away rejoicing, full of hope that the contents of the fruit would enable him to start in life anew. Now it happened that as his house was situated on the other side of the river which passed through the town he had to cross it, and in doing so his foot slipped and the fruit fell into the water and was carried away by the flood. The poor merchant wept over this misfortune, and returned home, cursing his evil star.

He was now fully persuaded that it was the will of Iswara[275] that he should remain poor; and, thinking it useless, therefore, to struggle against Destiny, he resolved never to ask anybody for help again, but to live as best he could till it should please Iswara that he should see better days.

* * * * *

To the same class, also, belongs No. 104 of the selection of monkish Latin Stories edited by Thomas Wright for the Percy Society, of which this is a translation:

There were two blind men in the Roman state. One of them daily cried through the town: “He is well helped whom the Lord wills to help.” The other exclaimed: “He is well helped whom the emperor wills to help.” When they had said this very often, daily, and the emperor had frequently heard it, he caused a cake to be made and many talents to be put into it, and ordered this cake filled with talents to be given to the blind man [who said that he was well helped whom the emperor helped]. Having received it, and feeling the cake heavy, and meeting the other blind man, he sold him the cake for his children. He who bought the cake, coming home and breaking it, finding it full of money, gave thanks to God, and for the rest of his life ceased to beg. But the other continued to be as formerly, and the emperor called him, and said to him: “Where is the cake which I ordered to be given you yesterday?” He replied: “I sold it for a trifle to my companion, because I thought it was raw.” “Truly,” said the emperor, “he is well helped whom God helps!” And he turned away and refused to aid the blind beggar.

A similar story is told by Gower in his _Confessio Amantis_, Book v, only here the emperor causes two pasties to be made, into one of which he puts some florins and into the other a capon, and the beggars exchange pasties. Another analogue is found in _Past Days in India_ (London: 1874), pp. 169-171, where two _fakírs_ (Hindú religious mendicants) are among the crowd at a grand royal festival, one of whom, to flatter the king, bawls out: “Kings have all sublunary power, and they give to whom they please; what, then, can the Ruler of Destiny do?” The other, an honest fellow, rebuked him, saying: “When the Ruler of Destiny gives, what can the greatest king do?” With limes in place of pasties, the result is the same as in Gower’s story.[276]

HISTORY OF FARRUKHRÚZ

This most entertaining little romance, which all readers would wish longer, may be considered as exemplifying—if we can allow ourselves to suppose such strange occurrences to be possible—the adage that “it is better to be born lucky than rich.” Unlike most heroes of romance, the troubles of Farrukhrúz are comparatively few and of very brief duration; and even while he is in tribulation we feel confident that he will presently emerge from it, being so evidently a favourite of Fortune. Several of the incidents in the tale are peculiarly interesting to comparative “storiologists.”

_The Ungrateful Brothers_—pp. 149-152.

The diabolical treatment of Farrukhrúz by his two brothers was probably adapted from the tale of “The Witch Shamsah and Táhir of Basra,” which occurs in the Turkish story-book, _Al-Faraj ba’d al-Shiddah_, and of which the following is the outline:

One day three jewels were brought to Harún er-Rashíd, who greatly admired them, but his vazír, Fazl bin Rabí’, told him that a merchant of Basra, called Táhir the dog-worshipper, possessed much finer ones. Táhir is sent for, exhibits his thirty unequalled jewels, protests that he is a good Mussulman, but admits that he has two dogs well cared for, and then proceeds to relate his history: His father ’Asim had left a wealthy estate to him and his two brothers, who soon squander their shares and become destitute. He has pity for them and takes them with him on a trading voyage. While he slept on deck, they threw him overboard. He escapes on a plank and is cast ashore on the island of Gang, where he finds his two brothers. They trump up a charge against him before the king, to whom they had made a present of his favourite slave-girl, and he is thrown into a dark pit, where he meets with a youth who is also the victim of a treacherous brother, and whose sweetheart rescues them both. Wandering forth, they fall in with a caravan, and here again Táhir meets his brothers, who leave him wounded and almost dead on the road, where he is found by a princess, who has his wounds dressed, and takes him to her father’s palace. She is Kamar al-Bahr, the daughter of the king of Gang, and falls in love with him. They are betrayed to the king, who is about to slay them, but makes them over to his vazír, who puts them in a boat. They fall in with pirates, who take the princess and leave Táhir in the boat, which they send adrift. The pirates fight over their prize and kill each other, all but one, whom the princess contrives to get rid of by poison. Táhir, drifting in his boat is picked up by a passing ship, where once more he finds his rascally brothers. They wish to put him to death, but are persuaded to hand him over to the king of Iram, an island on which they land.[277] There the two brothers find the princess of Gang and present her to the king, who immediately becomes madly enamoured of her, but she will not yield to his desires. Then he tries to terrify her into submission by slaying a prisoner before her eyes, who happens to be none other than Táhir. The king was raising his sword to cut off his head but gave way to her entreaties and released him. By the advice and with the help of a kind officer, Táhir crosses the sea to Jazíra-i Firdaus,[278] the realm of the mighty sorceress Shamsah, where he finds a paradise indeed, and enters a magnificent but untenanted palace. Suddenly he hears an awful sound, and a dragon appears and ascends the throne. It then changes into an old woman—Shamsah herself. She hears his story, takes pity on him, and sends with him an innumerable host of wild beasts to the conquest of Iram. He returns victorious to pay homage to Shamsah, who gives him his beloved princess in marriage and along with her a string of thirty jewels, and two magic vials of green and red oil, one having the virtue of changing men into beasts, the other that of restoring them to their natural shape. After a while Táhir returns with his wife to Basra, whither he is soon followed by his two brothers, whom he changes to dogs.—At the intercession of the Khalíf Harún er-Rashíd, Táhir consents to forgive his brothers and restores them to their human form.

* * * * *

If the idea of the ungrateful conduct of the two brothers towards Farrukhrúz was derived from the foregoing tale of Táhir, the latter in its turn, seems to have been adapted from the story of the dog-worshipping merchant of Nishapúr, in the Persian _Kissa-i Chehár Darvesh_, of which the _Bagh o Bahár_ is a modern Urdú version, and in the latter we find the story told at very considerable length and with more details and incidents than in the Turkish version, while all that relates to the sorcerer Shamsah is peculiar to the latter. It would occupy too much space, in view of what remains to be said regarding other tales in our collection, to give even the outline of the Persian original, but it may be mentioned that in place of the two wicked brothers being changed to dogs they are confined in cages; while the merchant’s dog, who had often saved his life when attempted by his brothers, and continued faithful to him through all his vicissitudes, is adorned with a collar set with priceless rubies and attended by two slaves—the merchant thereby indicating, so to say, his approval of the aphorism of the ancient Hindú sage, that “a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man.”—In our tale, it will be observed, the two wicked brothers do not reappear after they cut Farrukhrúz adrift.

_The Three Expeditions_—p. 154 ff.

It is a very usual occurrence in folk-tales, as well as in tales of more elaborate construction, for the hero, after becoming the king’s chief favourite, to be the mark for the shafts of envy and malice. Plots are laid in order to bring about his destruction, and, commonly through the suggestions of his enviers, the king is induced to despatch him on most perilous adventures—almost invariably three in succession, as in our little romance. Sometimes it is the hero’s brothers who are envious of his good fortune and thus seek to cause his death; sometimes a courtier whom he has supplanted in the king’s favour and patronage. We have examples of both kinds of enviers in Geldart’s _Folk-Lore of Modern Greece_, an entertaining collection, as well as useful to such as are interested in the study of popular fictions. Thus, in the tale of “Constantes and the Dragon,” the hero’s elder brother is jealous of his favour with the king, and it is at his suggestion that Constantes is sent to procure for the king (1) the Dragon’s diamond ring; (2) the Dragon’s horse and bell; (3) the very Dragon himself. And in the tale of “Little John, the Widow’s Son,” the hero, thus styled, becomes the king’s hunter, and one day kills (1) a wild beast, whose skin was all covered with precious gems. The king shows this treasure to his courtiers, who declare they have seen nothing like it under heaven. The vazír, however, says the skin is all very well, but if the king had the bones of elephants to build a church with, all the kings of the earth would come to admire it, and the skin as well. So the young hero is despatched to procure (2) a sufficient quantity of elephants’ bones to build a church with, and returns successful. He is then sent, at the suggestion of the vazír, to bring the Dragon’s daughter to the king, in which, of course, he also succeeds, and thus the vazír’s malice comes all to naught.

We have three examples from Sweden in _Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories_. In No. I of “The Boy that stole the Giant’s Treasures” a peasant dies and leaves his small property to his three sons. The two elder (as in the story of the merchant of Nishapúr in the _Chehár Darvesh_, referred to, page 495) take all that was valuable, leaving the youngest an old split kneading-trough for his share. The lads all enter the service of a king—the youngest helps in the royal kitchen and is liked by everybody. His two elder brothers are envious of him and induce the king to send him (1) for the Troll’s seven silver ducks; (2) his gold and silver bed-quilt; and (3) his golden harp.[279]—In No. II three brothers set out in quest of their fortune, and the two elder obtain employment as helpers in the royal stables, while the youngest is taken as page to the king’s young son. His brothers are sorely nettled at his preferment, and consult how they might compass his disgrace. They tell the king of a wonderful golden lantern that shed light over both land and water, and add that it ill beseemed a king to lack so precious a treasure. The king asks, excitedly, where this lamp is to be found and who could procure it for him. The brothers reply: “No one can do that, unless it be our brother Pinkel. He knows best where the lantern is to be found.” So the king despatches Pinkel to get him the golden lantern, promising to make him the chief person at court should he bring it. Pinkel goes off and returns in safety with the (1) lantern; and the king made him the chief person at court, as he had promised. The brothers, hearing of his success, become more envious than before, and at their suggestion the king sends him to procure (2) the beautiful goat that had horns of the purest gold, from which little gold bells were suspended, which gave forth a pleasing sound whenever the animal moved; and next (3) the Troll-crone’s fur cloak, that shone like the brightest gold, and was worked with golden threads in every seam; after which the king gave him his daughter in marriage, and he thus became heir to the kingdom, but his brothers continued to be helpers in the royal stable as long as they lived.—In No. III two poor lads roam about the country in search of a livelihood. At length the younger is received by the king among his pages, but the elder goes about begging as before: through the influence of his brother, however, he is shortly taken into the king’s service as a stable-boy. The elder brother is continually thinking of how he might get the younger disgraced. One day when the king visits his stables he praises a favourite horse, upon which the stable-lad tells him that he knows of a golden horse that excels all horses in the world, but only his brother could procure it. In brief, the hero procures for the king (1) the golden horse; (2) the moon lantern; and (3) a princess who had been enchanted.

In No. 8 of M. Legrand’s _Contes Populaires Grecs_ (Paris, 1881) the hero, at the suggestion of the Beardless Man, is sent by the king (1) for the ivory chamber; (2) for the nightingale and wall swallow; and (3) for the belle of the world.—And in M. Renè Basset’s _Contes Populaires Berbères_ (Paris, 1887), No. 27, the hero is despatched by the king, at the instigation of his enemies, to procure (1) the coral tree; (2) the palm tree of the wild beasts; (3) the woman with silver attire; and, of course, returns successful from each perilous expedition. M. Renè Basset in his Notes, pp. 163-166, refers to several parallels or analogues from Brittany, Lorraine, the West Highlands of Scotland, etc.

A story from Salsette, entitled “Karne da Pequeno João,” by Geo. Fr. D’Penha, in the _Indian Antiquary_, 1888, p. 327 ff., is full of interest to folk-lorists, apart from its connection with the “envious brothers” cycle: Three brothers, of whom Little John, the youngest, is as usual the only clever one, set out to seek their fortunes. They rest for the night in the abode of an ogre, who resolves to kill them while they are asleep and eat all three for breakfast. The ogre has three daughters, and he puts white caps on them and red caps on the youths. The two elder brothers are soon fast asleep, not so Little John. He suspects mischief is brewing, and changes caps with the ogre’s daughters, who are consequently killed by their father in mistake for the three lads. Little John rouses his two brothers and they cross the river, which the ogre cannot do, being unable to swim. In the morning the ogre sees them, and cries out that he will make John pay for it yet! They take service with a king: John is made a shepherd, the others are given places of trust. John puts on one of the caps (he had taken all of them with him) on his head and begins to play on his pipe, whereupon all the sheep begin to caper and dance. The princess sees this, and gets the cap from him, and so on till she has got the sixth, on the promise of her love. The king, at the instigation of the princess, pays John better wages, and his brothers are envious of his good fortune. Soon after this the king falls ill, and the two elder brothers suggest to him that John should be sent to fetch (1) the ogre’s parrot. John manages to carry off the bird, and the ogre cries after him that he’ll make him pay for it yet! But John says he’ll come again. In short, John afterwards procures (2) the ogre’s mare; (3) his diamond ring; (4) his sword; (5) his blanket; and (6) the ogre himself. After each expedition John is promoted to a still higher station till he is made vazír and finally marries the princess. He does not punish his brothers, the good young man, but raises them to high offices of state.

In many instances, as in the case of Farrukhrúz, the hero is assisted by fairies or other superhuman beings, but with the means by which the seemingly impossible tasks are accomplished we have no present concern and so I have passed them over. The third and last expedition of Farrukhrúz, suggested by the envious vazírs of the king of Yaman—who was, like the monarchs of Eastern fictions generally, a credulous blockhead—by which they made sure to cause the death of the favourite, but which ended so disastrously for themselves—thus illustrating the saying that “he who digs a pit for another,” and so forth: the proverb is somewhat musty—namely,

_The Expedition to Paradise (p. 183 ff.)_

has its close parallel in the Kalmuk _Relations of Siddhí Kúr_,[280] which form the first part of Miss Busk’s _Sagas from the Far East_, a work chiefly derived from Jülg’s German translation. In Miss Busk’s book, the story is No. VIII and entitled “How Ananda the Woodcarver and Ananda the Painter strove together,” and, pruned of some redundancies of language, this is how it goes:

Long ago there lived two men, a wood-carver and a painter, both named Ananda. While they appeared to be on very friendly terms, in reality jealousy reigned in their hearts. One day the painter presented himself before the Khán, and told him that his father of blessed memory had been re-born in the kingdom of the gods, in proof of which he handed the Khán a letter, forged by himself, which stated such to be the fact, and directed the Khán to send forthwith Ananda the Woodcarver to the kingdom of the gods, to adorn with his cunning a temple which he was building—“the way and means of his coming shall be explained by Ananda the Painter.” The Khán, believing all this to be true, at once sent for the Woodcarver, informed him of his father the late Khán’s message, and commanded him to prepare forthwith to depart for the kingdom of the gods. The Woodcarver knew that this was the device of the Painter, and resolved to meet craft with craft, but, dissembling his feelings, asked by what means he was to win thither. Hereupon the Khán sent for the Painter, and ordered him to declare the way and manner of the journey to the kingdom of the gods. The Painter replied, addressing the Woodcarver: “When thou hast collected all the materials and instruments appertaining to thy calling, and hast gathered them at thy feet, thou shalt order a pile of beams of wood well steeped in spirit distilled from sesame grain to be heaped around thee. Then, to the accompaniment of every solemn-sounding instrument, kindle the pile, and rise to the gods’ kingdom, borne on the obedient clouds of smoke as on a swift charger.”

The Woodcarver durst not refuse the Khán’s behest, but obtained an interval of seven days in order to collect the materials and implements of his calling, and also to devise some plan of avenging himself upon the Painter. Returning home he consulted with his wife, who proposed a means of evading while seeming to obey the Khán’s command. In a field belonging to her husband, not far from the house, she caused a large flat stone to be laid, on which the sacrifice was to be consummated, and, at night, beneath it she had an underground passage made communicating with the house. And when the eighth day came, the Khán and all the people were assembled round the pile of wood steeped in spirit distilled from sesame grain in the Woodcarver’s field, and in the midst of it stood the Woodcarver, calm and impassable, while all kinds of musical instruments sent forth their solemn-sounding tones. And when the smoke began to rise in concealing density, the Woodcarver pushed aside the stone with his feet and returned to his house by the underground passage. The Painter, never doubting but that he must have fallen a prey to the flames, rubbed his hands, and, pointing to the curling smoke, cried to the people: “Behold the spirit of Ananda the Woodcarver ascending to the kingdom of the gods!” And all the people, believing him, echoed his words.

For the space of a whole month the Woodcarver remained secluded in his house, daily washing his face with milk and keeping out of the sunshine. Then his wife brought him a garment of white gauze, with which he covered himself, and, taking with him a letter which he had forged, he went into the presence of the Khán, who when he saw him said: “Thou art returned from the kingdom of the gods—how didst thou leave my father?” Then he gave the forged letter to the Khán, who caused it to be read aloud to the people. The letter stated that the Woodcarver had executed the sculptures well, but it was necessary that they should send thither Ananda the Painter, in order that they should be suitably decorated. When the Khán heard this letter read he was overjoyed, and he loaded the Woodcarver with rich presents. And then he sent for Ananda the Painter, and told him how his father in the kingdom of the gods required his services. On hearing this the Painter was seized with great fear, but when he looked at the Woodcarver, all white and radiant from the milk-washing, and clad in celestial raiment, as if the light of the gods’ kingdom yet clove to him, and that the fire had not burnt him, neither should it burn himself; moreover, if he refused to go, death must be his portion, while if he went he should, like the Woodcarver, also receive great wealth on his return. So he consented to have his gear in readiness in seven days. And when the prescribed day arrived, the Khán, in his robes of state, and attended by his ministers and officers, and all the people assembled in the Painter’s field, where was a great pile of wood steeped as before in spirit, and in the midst of it they placed the Painter; and, amidst the sound of all sorts of musical instruments, they set fire to the pile. At first the Painter bore the torture, expecting to rise on the clouds of smoke, but soon the extreme pain caused him to shout to the people to come and release him. But the sound of the music—his own device to drown the cries of the Woodcarver—prevailed against him: no one could hear his cries, and he perished miserably in the flames.

* * * * *

This story is doubtless of Buddhist extraction; but it is not very probable that our author was indebted to any Mongolian version such as the foregoing for the materials of the tale he has told so well, in which he represents the vile complotters against the life of Farrukhrúz as crying out for mercy when they saw the awful doom they had brought upon themselves, and the silly King of Yaman as still firm in the belief that they should really go to Paradise and return in safety with his beatified ancestors’ grand presents.

* * * * *

As a pendant, I may reproduce, from Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain’s interesting collection of _Aino Folk-Tales_, privately printed for the Folk-Lore Society, 1888, the story of “The Wicked Wizard Punished” (No. XXV):

One day a wizard told a man whom he knew that if any one were to climb a certain mountain-peak and jump off on to the belt of clouds below, he would be able to ride about on them as on a horse and see the whole world. Trusting in this, the man did as the wizard had told him, and in very truth was enabled to ride about on the clouds. He visited the whole world in this manner, and brought back a map which he had drawn of the whole world, both of men and gods. On arriving back at the mountain-peak in Aino-land, he stepped off the cloud on to the mountain, and, descending to the valley, told the wizard how successful and delightful the journey had been, and thanked him for the opportunity kindly granted him of seeing sights so numerous and so strange. The wizard was overcome with astonishment. For what he had told the other man was a lie—a wicked lie, invented with the sole intention of causing his death, for he hated him. Nevertheless, seeing that what he had simply meant for an idle tale was apparently an actual fact, he decided to see the world himself in this easy fashion. So, ascending the mountain-peak, and seeing a belt of clouds a short way below, he jumped off on to it, but was instantly dashed to pieces in the valley below. That night the god of the mountain appeared to the good man in a dream, and said: “The wizard has met with the death which his fraud and folly deserved. You I kept from hurt, because you are a good man. So when, obedient to the wizard’s advice, you leapt off on to the cloud I bore you up, and showed you the world to make you a wiser man. Let all men learn from this how wickedness leads to condign punishment!”

* * * * *

Such a tale as this is not at all likely to have been invented by a race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos; and we must, I think, consider it as one of the tales and legends which they derived from the Japanese. As it is, the story presents a remarkable general resemblance to the Mongolian tale of the Woodcarver and the Painter, of which one might almost say it is a reflection or an adaptation.

THE KING AND HIS FOUR MINISTERS.

Under the title of “Strike, but Hear,” a considerably abridged and modified version of this Tale is given in the Rev. Lal Behári Day’s _Folk-Tales of Bengal_ (London: Macmillan & Co., 1883), of which this is the substance:

A king appoints his three sons to patrol in turn the streets of his capital during the night. It happens that the youngest prince in going his rounds one night sees a very beautiful woman issuing from the palace, and he asks to know what business she is bent upon at such an hour. She replies: “I am the guardian deity of this palace. The king will be killed this night, and therefore I am going away.” The prince persuades the goddess to return into the palace and await the event. He enters his father’s bed-chamber and discovers a huge cobra near the royal couch, and at once cuts the deadly snake into many pieces, which he puts into a brass vessel that was in the room. Then seeing that some drops of the serpent’s blood had fallen on his step-mother’s bosom, he wraps a piece of cloth round his tongue to protect it from the poison, and licks off the blood. The lady awakes, and recognises him as he is leaving the room. She accuses him to the king of having used an unpardonable freedom with her. In the morning the king sends for his eldest son and asks him: “If a trusted servant should prove faithless, how should he be punished?” The prince replies: “Surely his head should be parted from his body. But before doing so, you should ascertain whether the man is actually guilty.” And then he proceeds to relate the

_Story of the Woman who knew the Language of Animals_.

There was in former times a goldsmith who had a grown-up son, whose wife was acquainted with the language of animals, but she kept secret from her husband and all others the fact of her being endowed with such a rare gift. It happened one night that she heard a jackal exclaim: “There is a dead body floating on the river; would that some one might give me that body to eat, and for his pains take the diamond ring from the finger of that dead man.” The woman arose from her bed and went to the bank of the river, and her husband, who had not been asleep, got up and followed her unobserved. She went into the water, drew the corpse on to the land, and, being unable to loose the ring from the dead man’s finger, which had swelled, she bit off the finger, and, leaving the corpse on the bank of the river, returned home, whither she had been preceded by her husband. Almost petrified by fear, the young goldsmith concluded from what he had seen that his wife was not a human being but a _rákshasí_; and early in the morning he hastened to his father and related the whole affair to him—how the woman had got up during the night and gone to the river, out of which she dragged a dead body on to the land, and was busy devouring it when he ran home in horror at the loathsome sight. The old man was greatly shocked, and advised his son to take his wife on some pretext into the forest, and leave her there to be destroyed by wild beasts. So the husband caused the woman to get herself ready to go on a visit to her parents, and after a hasty breakfast they set out. In going through a dense _jangal_, where the goldsmith purposed abandoning his wife, she heard a serpent cry: “O passenger, I pray thee to seize and give me that croaking frog, and take for thy reward the gold and precious stones concealed in yonder hole.” The woman at once seized the frog and threw it towards the serpent, and then began digging into the ground with a stick. Her husband quaked with fear, thinking that his ghúl-wife was about to kill him; but she called to him, saying: “My dear husband, gather up all the gold and precious gems.” Approaching the spot with hesitation, he was surprised to perceive an immense treasure laid bare by his wife, who then explained to him how she had learned of it from the snake that lay coiled up near them, whose language she understood. Then said he to his wife: “It is now so late that we cannot reach your father’s house before dark, and we might be slain by wild beasts. Let us therefore return home.” So they retraced their steps, and approaching the house, the goldsmith said to his wife: “Do you, my dear, go in by the back door, while I enter by the front and show my father all this treasure.” The woman accordingly went in by the back door and was met by her father-in-law, who, on seeing her, concluded that she had killed and devoured his son, and striking her on the head with a hammer which he happened to have in his hand she instantly fell down dead. Just then the son came into the room, but it was too late.

“I have told your majesty this story,” adds the eldest prince, “in order that, before putting the man to death, you should make sure that he is guilty.”

The king then calls his second son, and asks him the same question as he had asked his brother, to which he replies by relating the

_Story of the King and his Faithful Horse_.

Once a king while engaged in the chase was separated from his attendants, and seeing what he conceived to be rain-water dropping from the branch of a tree, being very thirsty, he held his drinking-cup under it until it was nearly filled, and as he was about to put it to his lips his horse purposely moved so as to cause the contents to be spilled on the ground, upon which the king in a rage drew his sword and killed the faithful animal. But afterwards discovering that what he had taken for rain-water was poison that dropped from a cobra in the tree, his grief knew no bounds.

Calling his third son, the king asks him what should be done to the man who proved false to his trust, and the prince tells the

_Story of the Wonderful Fruit_

which bestowed perennial youth on him who ate of it, with some unimportant variations from the same story in our Romance.

Then the youngest prince explained the occasion of his presence in the royal bed-chamber, and how he had saved the king and his consort from the cobra’s deadly bite. And his majesty, overjoyed and full of gratitude, strained his faithful son to his heart, and ever afterwards cherished and loved him with all a father’s love.

* * * * *

Another version is orally current in Kashmír, and, under the title of “The Four Princes,” a translation of it is given by the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles in his excellent collection, _Folk-Tales of Kashmír_, from which are extracted the following details:

Four clever and handsome young princes are hated by their step-mother, who persuades her husband the king to cease his personal and secret inspection of the city and adjacent towns and villages—which had long been his custom, going about at night in disguise—and appoint his four grown-up, idle sons to the duties. But still the queen is jealous of them, and poisons the king’s mind against them, so that he speaks harshly to his worthy sons, without any apparent cause. One night the four princes met together and discussed the altered conduct of the king towards them, and the three younger proposed that they should privily quit the country, but this was strenuously opposed by the eldest brother, who suggested that they should rather take turn and patrol the city, one of them each night, to which they agreed. It happened that the eldest prince, in the course of his perambulation one night, came past the hut of a Bráhman, whom he saw gazing out of the open window towards the heavens, and presently heard him say to his wife that he had just observed the king’s star obscured by another star, which indicated that his majesty would die in seven days. His wife asked him how he should die then, and he replied that a black snake would descend from the sky on the seventh day, enter the royal bed-chamber by the door that opened into the courtyard, and bite the king’s toe, thus causing his death. Then the Bráhman made a sacrifice, and, after prayers and incantations, he told his wife farther, that the king’s life would be saved if one of his relations dug pits in the courtyard on the east side of the palace, filled some with water and the others with milk, and scattered flowers on the ground between the ponds and the door of the king’s room. He must be ready, sword in hand, outside the door at the appointed time, when the snake will come and swim across the ponds and pass over the flowers, after which it will become comparatively harmless. Then he must strike and slay the snake with his sword, and taking some of its warm blood smear it over the king’s toes—thus will he be preserved from evil. The prince, having treasured these directions in his memory, on the seventh day follows them exactly, and having taken some of the snake’s blood, gently opens the door of the king’s chamber and enters, having first tied a bandage over his eyes, that he should not see the queen. But being thus blindfolded he smears the blood on the queen’s toes instead of those of the king, which causes her to awake, and to shriek on seeing a man glide out of the room, which awakes the king, who recognises his eldest son as the intruder. The queen, on discovering the blood on her feet concludes that it was a rákshasa, and becomes frantic with fright, but her husband sets her mind at rest by telling her that he is now assured of the wickedness of his sons, who had employed a demon to destroy them both, and he would have them all executed on the morrow, at which the queen was highly delighted. Then the king causes the four princes to be stripped of their royal robes and thrown into a dungeon. In the morning they are brought into the presence of the king, who gives order for their immediate execution, and they are being led away when one of them made signs and prostrated himself before the throne, as if he wished to say something. “Let him speak,” said the king. “Perhaps he wants to relieve his heart of some foul secret—let him speak.” The prince then began to relate the

_Story of the Merchant and his Faithful Dog_,

which differs materially from our story of the Hunter and his Dog (p. 206), but agrees with some versions current in various parts of India: A young merchant meets four men who are quarrelling over the possession of a poor dog, which they are dragging about most unmercifully. They tell him it is not an ordinary dog, for their late father charged them not to sell it for less than 20,000 rupís. He gives them the money and takes the dog with him. By-and-by he loses all his wealth through a series of unfortunate transactions, and borrows 15,000 rupís of another merchant on the security of his dog. One night a gang of robbers break into the merchant’s house and carry off all his valuables. They are followed unobserved by the dog, who watches them dig a pit and bury the treasure in it, intending to return and share their booty when they might do so with safety. Next day the dog, by means of signs, leads the merchant to the spot where his wealth was hidden, and when it is discovered, full of gratitude to the faithful animal, he writes out an acquittance of the young merchant’s loan, and having related the great service the dog had done him expressed a wish to purchase the dog, for which he enclosed a draft for 30,000 rupís, and putting the letter in the dog’s mouth, sends him back to his master. As the dog is trotting along he meets his master, who, concluding that he had run away, and that the merchant would quickly follow, determined to kill the animal, and if the merchant should come, he would say: “Give me back my dog, and I will return the money.” But when he had killed his dog and was about to take the carcase up, in order to conceal it, the letter dropped from his mouth, and the young merchant, stricken with remorse, fell down insensible.

Another of the princes then steps forward and relates the

_Story of the Woman who knew the Language of Animals_,

which does not differ very much from the same tale in the Bengalí collection, cited on p. 505, above, excepting that in place of a goldsmith the husband is a _shikárí_, or hunter; it is a bracelet set with five precious stones, not a diamond ring that the woman takes off the corpse in the river, and a crow, not a serpent, that tells of the treasure underground; and it is her father-in-law, not her husband, who accompanies her, and it is her husband who kills her when she comes home, thinking that she had devoured his father.

The youngest prince next makes his obeisance to his majesty and obtains leave to relate the

_Story of the King and his Falcon_,

which is similar to that of the King and his Faithful Horse in the Bengalí version: The king is about to drink of some water he had drawn from a spring, when his falcon dashed the cup out of his hand, whereupon the thirsty and enraged king drew his sword and killed his favourite bird. Afterwards a huge and deadly snake was found coiled up at the head of the spring, and too late the king saw that the falcon had saved his life.

His majesty having heard these stories, now began to suspect that his wife had deceived him regarding his four sons, and when the eldest prince had explained the whole affair, and shown the king the pits of water and milk and the body of the serpent, he was fully reconciled to them, and abdicating the throne in favour of his eldest son, and appointing the others to be governors of provinces, he retired to the wilderness and became a hermit.

_The Lost Camel_—p. 194.

Few stories are more widely spread than that of the Lost Camel, which occurs in the opening of our romance. It was formerly, and perhaps is still, reproduced in school-books as a reading exercise. Voltaire, in