The Arabian Nights Entertainments by Anonymous (best books to read .txt) 📕

The Thirteenth Night.

Dinarzade, willing to keep the sultan in ignorance of her design, cried out, as if she had started out of her sleep, 0 dear sister, I have had a troublesome dream, and nothing will sooner make me forget it than the remainder of the story of the Grecian king and the doctor Douban. I conjure you, by the love you always bore me, not to defer it a moment longer. I shall not be wanting, good sister, to ease your mind; and, if my sovereign will permit me, I will go on. Schahriar, being charmed with the agreeable manner of Scheherazade's telling her story, says to her, You will oblige me no less than Dinarzade, therefore continue.

The Grecian king (says the fisherman to the genie) was not satisfied with having admitted the physician Douban to his table, but towards night, when he was about dismissing the company, he caused him to be clad in a long rich robe, like unto those which his favourites usually wore in his presence; and, besides that, he ordered him two thousand sequins. The next day, and the day following, he was very familiar with him. In short, this prince, thinking that he could never enough acknowledge the obligations he lay under to that able physician, bestowed every day new favours upon him. But this king had a grand vizier that was avaricious, envious, and naturally capable of all sorts of mischief; he could not see, without envy, the presents that were given to the physician, whose other merits had begun to make him jealous, and therefore he resolved to lessen him in the king's esteem. To effect this, he went to the king, and told him in private that he had some advice to give him which was of the greatest concernment. The king having asked what it was, Sir, said he, it is very dangerous for a monarch to put confidence in a man whose fidelity he never tried. Though you heap favours upon the physician Douban, and show him all the familiarity that may be, your majesty does not know but he may be a traitor at the same time, and came on purpose to this court to kill you. From whom have you this, answered the king, that you dare tell it me? Consider to whom you speak, and that you advance a thing which I shall not easily believe. Sir, replied the vizier, I am very well informed of what I have had the honour to represent to your majesty, therefore do not let your dangerous confidence grow to a further height; if your majesty be asleep, be pleased to awake; for I do once more repeat it, that the physician Douban did not leave the heart of Greece, his country, nor come hither to settle himself at your court, but to execute that horrid design which I have just now hinted to you.

No, no, vizier, replies the king, I am certain that this man, whom you treat as a villain and a traitor, is one of the best and most virtuous men in the world; and there is no man I love so much. You know by what medicine, or rather by what miracle, he cured me of my leprosy; if he had a design upon my life, why did he save me? He needed only to have left me to my disease; I could not have escaped; my life was already half gone; forbear, then, to fill me with any unjust suspicions. Instead of listening to you, I tell you, that from this day forward I will give that great man a pension of a thousand sequins per month for his life; nay, though I did share with him all my riches and dominions, I should never pay him enough for what he has done me; I perceive it to be his virtue that raises your envy; but do not think that I will be unjustly possessed with prejudice against him; I remember too well what a vizier said to King Sinbad, his master, to prevent his putting to death the prince his son. But, sir, says Scheherazade, day-light appears, which forbids me to go further.

I am very well pleased that the Grecian king, says Dinarzade, had so much firmness of spirit as to reject the false accusation of his vizier. If you commend the firmness of that prince to-day, says Scheherazade, you will as much condemn his weakness to-morrow, if the sultan be pleased to allow me time to finish this story. The sultan, being curious to hear wherein the Grecian king discovered his weakness, did further delay the death of the sultaness.

The Fourteenth Night.

An hour before day, Dinarzade awaked her sister, and says to her, you will certainly be as good as your word, madam, and tell us out the story of the fisherman. To assist your memory, I will tell you where you left off; it was where the Grecian king maintained the innocence of his physician Douban against his vizier. I remember it, says Scheherazade, and am ready to give you satisfaction.

Sir, continues she, addressing herself to Schahriar, that which the Grecian king said about King Sinbad raised the vizier's curiosity, who says to him, Sir, I pray your majesty to pardon me, if I have the boldness to demand of you what the vizier of King Sinbad said to his master to divert him from cutting off the prince his son. The Grecian king had the complaisance to satisfy him: That vizier, says he, after having represented to King Sinbad that he ought to beware lest, on the accusation of a mother-in-law, he should commit an action which he might afterwards repent of, told him this story.

A certain man had a fair wife, whom he loved so dearly that he could scarcely allow her to be out of his sight. One day, being obliged to go abroad about urgent affairs, he came to a place where all sorts of birds were sold, and there bought a parrot, which not only spoke very well, but could also give an account of every thing that was done before it. He brought it in a cage to his house, prayed his wife to put it in the chamber, and to take care of it, during a journey he was obliged to undertake, and then went out.

At his return, he took care to ask the parrot concerning what had passed in his absence, and the bird told him things that gave him occasion to upbraid his wife. She thought some of her slaves had betrayed her, but all of them swore they had been faithful to her; and they all agreed that it must have been the parrot that had told tales.

Upon this, the wife bethought herself of a way how, she might remove her husband's jealousy, and at the same time revenge herself on the parrot, which she effected thus: Her husband being gone another journey, she commanded a slave, in the night time, to turn a hand-mill under the parrot's cage; she ordered another to throw water, in form of rain, over the cage; and a third to take a glass, and turn it to the right and to the left before the parrot, so as the reflections of the candle might shine on its face. The slaves spent great part of the night in doing what their mistress commanded them, and acquitted themselves very dexterously.

Next night the husband returned, and examined the parrot again about what had passed during his absence. The bird answered, Good master, the lightning, thunder, and rain, did so much disturb me all night, that I cannot tell how much I suffered by it. The husband, who knew that there had been neither thunder, lightning, nor rain that night, fancied that the parrot, not having told him the truth in this, might also have lied to him in the other; upon which he took it out of the cage, and threw it with so much force to the ground that he killed it; yet afterwards he understood, by his neighbours, that the poor parrot had not lied to him when it gave him an account of his wife's base conduct, which made him repent that he had killed it. Scheherazade stopped here, because she saw it was day.

All that you tell us, sister, says Dinarzade is so curious, that nothing can be more agreeable. I shall be willing to divert you, answers Scheherazade, if the sultan, my master, will allow me time to do it. Schahriar, who took as much pleasure to hear the sultaness as Dinarzade, rose, and went about his affairs, without ordering the vizier to cut her off.

The Fifteenth Night.

Dinarzade was punctual this night, as she had been the former, to awake her sister, and begged of her, as usual, to tell her a story. I am going to do it, sister, says Scheherazade; but the sultan interrupted her, for fear she should begin a new story, and bid her finish the discourse between the Grecian king and his vizier about his physician Douban. Sir, says Scheherazade, I will obey you, and went on with the story as follows.

When the Grecian king, says the fisherman to the genie, had finished the story of the parrot; and you, vizier, adds he, because of the hatred you bear to the physician Douban, who never did you any hurt, you would have me cut him off; but I will take care of that, for fear I should repent it, as the husband did the killing of his parrot.

The mischievous vizier was too much concerned to effect the ruin of the physician Douban to stop here. Sir, says he, the death of the parrot was but a trifle, and I believe his master did not mourn for him long. But why should your fear of wronging an innocent man hinder your putting this physician to death? Is it not enough that he is accused of a design against your life to authorize you to take away his? When the business in question is to secure the life of a king, bare suspicion ought to pass for certainty; and it is better to sacrifice the innocent than to spare the guilty. But, sir, this is not an uncertain thing; the physician Douban has certainly a mind to assassinate you. It is not envy which makes me his enemy; it is only the zeal and concern I have for preserving your majesty's life, that make me give you my advice in a matter of this importance. If it be false, I deserve to be punished in the same manner as a vizier was formerly punished. What had that vizier done, says the Grecian king, to deserve punishment? I will inform your majesty of that, says the vizier, if you will be pleased to hear me.

There was a king, says the vizier, who had a son that loved hunting mightily. He allowed him to divert himself that way very often, but gave orders to his grand vizier to attend him constantly, and never to lose sight of him.

One hunting day, the huntsman having roused a deer, the prince who thought the vizier followed him, pursued the game so far, and with so much earnestness, that he was left quite alone. He stopped, and finding that he had lost his way, endeavoured to return the same way he came, to find out the vizier, who had not been careful enough to find him, and so wandered further.

Whilst he rode up and down without keeping any road, he met, by the way-side, a handsome lady, who wept bitterly. He stopped his horse, asked who she was, how she came to be alone in that place, and what she wanted? I am, says she, daughter of an Indian king; as I was taking the air on horseback in the country, I grew sleepy, fell from my horse, who is got away, and I know not what is become