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<h2> THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE </h2>
<p>Truth is stranger than fiction.<br/>
<br/>
OLD SAYING.<br/></p>
<p>HAVING had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental
investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsoornot, a work which (like
the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at all, even in Europe;
and which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any American—if
we except, perhaps, the author of the "Curiosities of American
Literature";—having had occasion, I say, to turn over some pages of
the first-mentioned very remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to
discover that the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error
respecting the fate of the vizier's daughter, Scheherazade, as that fate
is depicted in the "Arabian Nights"; and that the denouement there given,
if not altogether inaccurate, as far as it goes, is at least to blame in
not having gone very much farther.</p>
<p>For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the
inquisitive reader to the "Isitsoornot" itself, but in the meantime, I
shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I there discovered.</p>
<p>It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a certain
monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not only puts her to
death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the prophet, to espouse each
night the most beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the next morning to
deliver her up to the executioner.</p>
<p>Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with a
religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit upon him as a
man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was interrupted one
afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit from his grand vizier, to
whose daughter, it appears, there had occurred an idea.</p>
<p>Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would either redeem
the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty, or perish, after the
approved fashion of all heroines, in the attempt.</p>
<p>Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year (which makes
the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her father, the grand vizier,
to make an offer to the king of her hand. This hand the king eagerly
accepts—(he had intended to take it at all events, and had put off
the matter from day to day, only through fear of the vizier),—but,
in accepting it now, he gives all parties very distinctly to understand,
that, grand vizier or no grand vizier, he has not the slightest design of
giving up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. When, therefore, the
fair Scheherazade insisted upon marrying the king, and did actually marry
him despite her father's excellent advice not to do any thing of the kind—when
she would and did marry him, I say, will I, nill I, it was with her
beautiful black eyes as thoroughly open as the nature of the case would
allow.</p>
<p>It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading
Machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very ingenious little plot in her mind.
On the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon I forget what specious
pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch sufficiently near that of the
royal pair to admit of easy conversation from bed to bed; and, a little
before cock-crowing, she took care to awaken the good monarch, her husband
(who bore her none the worse will because he intended to wring her neck on
the morrow),—she managed to awaken him, I say, (although on account
of a capital conscience and an easy digestion, he slept well) by the
profound interest of a story (about a rat and a black cat, I think) which
she was narrating (all in an undertone, of course) to her sister. When the
day broke, it so happened that this history was not altogether finished,
and that Scheherazade, in the nature of things could not finish it just
then, since it was high time for her to get up and be bowstrung—a
thing very little more pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel.</p>
<p>The king's curiosity, however, prevailing, I am sorry to say, even over
his sound religious principles, induced him for this once to postpone the
fulfilment of his vow until next morning, for the purpose and with the
hope of hearing that night how it fared in the end with the black cat (a
black cat, I think it was) and the rat.</p>
<p>The night having arrived, however, the lady Scheherazade not only put the
finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat (the rat was blue) but
before she well knew what she was about, found herself deep in the
intricacies of a narration, having reference (if I am not altogether
mistaken) to a pink horse (with green wings) that went, in a violent
manner, by clockwork, and was wound up with an indigo key. With this
history the king was even more profoundly interested than with the other—and,
as the day broke before its conclusion (notwithstanding all the queen's
endeavors to get through with it in time for the bowstringing), there was
again no resource but to postpone that ceremony as before, for twenty-four
hours. The next night there happened a similar accident with a similar
result; and then the next—and then again the next; so that, in the
end, the good monarch, having been unavoidably deprived of all opportunity
to keep his vow during a period of no less than one thousand and one
nights, either forgets it altogether by the expiration of this time, or
gets himself absolved of it in the regular way, or (what is more probable)
breaks it outright, as well as the head of his father confessor. At all
events, Scheherazade, who, being lineally descended from Eve, fell heir,
perhaps, to the whole seven baskets of talk, which the latter lady, we all
know, picked up from under the trees in the garden of Eden—Scheherazade,
I say, finally triumphed, and the tariff upon beauty was repealed.</p>
<p>Now, this conclusion (which is that of the story as we have it upon
record) is, no doubt, excessively proper and pleasant—but alas! like
a great many pleasant things, is more pleasant than true, and I am
indebted altogether to the "Isitsoornot" for the means of correcting the
error. "Le mieux," says a French proverb, "est l'ennemi du bien," and, in
mentioning that Scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of talk, I
should have added that she put them out at compound interest until they
amounted to seventy-seven.</p>
<p>"My dear sister," said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I quote the
language of the "Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear sister,"
said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has
blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, I feel that I
have been guilty of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the
king (who I am sorry to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do)
the full conclusion of Sinbad the sailor. This person went through
numerous other and more interesting adventures than those which I related;
but the truth is, I felt sleepy on the particular night of their
narration, and so was seduced into cutting them short—a grievous
piece of misconduct, for which I only trust that Allah will forgive me.
But even yet it is not too late to remedy my great neglect—and as
soon as I have given the king a pinch or two in order to wake him up so
far that he may stop making that horrible noise, I will forthwith
entertain you (and him if he pleases) with the sequel of this very
remarkable story."</p>
<p>Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it from the "Isitsoornot,"
expressed no very particular intensity of gratification; but the king,
having been sufficiently pinched, at length ceased snoring, and finally
said, "hum!" and then "hoo!" when the queen, understanding these words
(which are no doubt Arabic) to signify that he was all attention, and
would do his best not to snore any more—the queen, I say, having
arranged these matters to her satisfaction, re-entered thus, at once, into
the history of Sinbad the sailor:</p>
<p>"'At length, in my old age,' [these are the words of Sinbad himself, as
retailed by Scheherazade]—'at length, in my old age, and after
enjoying many years of tranquillity at home, I became once more possessed
of a desire of visiting foreign countries; and one day, without
acquainting any of my family with my design, I packed up some bundles of
such merchandise as was most precious and least bulky, and, engaged a
porter to carry them, went with him down to the sea-shore, to await the
arrival of any chance vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into
some region which I had not as yet explored.</p>
<p>"'Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down beneath some
trees, and looked out into the ocean in the hope of perceiving a ship, but
during several hours we saw none whatever. At length I fancied that I
could hear a singular buzzing or humming sound; and the porter, after
listening awhile, declared that he also could distinguish it. Presently it
grew louder, and then still louder, so that we could have no doubt that
the object which caused it was approaching us. At length, on the edge of
the horizon, we discovered a black speck, which rapidly increased in size
until we made it out to be a vast monster, swimming with a great part of
its body above the surface of the sea. It came toward us with
inconceivable swiftness, throwing up huge waves of foam around its breast,
and illuminating all that part of the sea through which it passed, with a
long line of fire that extended far off into the distance.</p>
<p>"'As the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly. Its length was equal
to that of three of the loftiest trees that grow, and it was as wide as
the great hall of audience in your palace, O most sublime and munificent
of the Caliphs. Its body, which was unlike that of ordinary fishes, was as
solid as a rock, and of a jetty blackness throughout all that portion of
it which floated above the water, with the exception of a narrow blood-red
streak that completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated beneath the
surface, and of which we could get only a glimpse now and then as the
monster rose and fell with the billows, was entirely covered with metallic
scales, of a color like that of the moon in misty weather. The back was
flat and nearly white, and from it there extended upwards of six spines,
about half the length of the whole body.</p>
<p>"'The horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive, but, as if to
make up for this deficiency, it was provided with at least four score of
eyes, that protruded from their sockets like those of the green
dragon-fly, and were arranged all around the body in two rows, one above
the other, and parallel to the blood-red streak, which seemed to answer
the purpose of an eyebrow. Two or three of these dreadful eyes were much
larger than the others, and had the appearance of solid gold.</p>
<p>"'Although this beast approached us, as I have before said, with the
greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by necromancy—for
it had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like a duck, nor wings like
the seashell which is blown along in the manner of a vessel; nor yet did
it writhe itself forward as do the eels. Its head and its tail were shaped
precisely alike, only, not far from the latter, were two small holes that
served for nostrils, and through which the monster puffed out its thick
breath with prodigious violence, and with a shrieking, disagreeable noise.</p>
<p>"'Our terror at beholding this hideous thing was very great, but it was
even surpassed by our astonishment, when upon getting a nearer look, we
perceived upon the creature's back a vast number of animals about the size
and shape of men, and altogether much resembling them, except that they
wore no garments (as men do), being supplied (by nature, no doubt) with an
ugly uncomfortable covering, a good deal like cloth, but fitting so tight
to the skin, as to render the poor wretches laughably awkward, and put
them apparently to severe pain. On the very tips of their heads were
certain square-looking boxes, which, at first sight, I thought might have
been intended to answer as turbans, but I soon discovered that they were
excessively heavy and solid, and I therefore concluded they were
contrivances designed, by their great weight, to keep the heads of the
animals steady and safe upon their shoulders. Around the necks of the
creatures were fastened black collars, (badges of servitude, no doubt,)
such as we keep on our dogs, only much wider and infinitely stiffer, so
that it was quite impossible for these poor victims to move their heads in
any direction without moving the body at the same time; and thus they were
doomed to perpetual contemplation of their noses—a view puggish and
snubby in a wonderful, if not positively in an awful degree.</p>
<p>"'When the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood, it
suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a great extent, and emitted from it
a terrible flash of fire, accompanied by a dense cloud of smoke, and a
noise that I can compare to nothing but thunder. As the smoke cleared
away, we saw one of the odd man-animals standing near the head of the
large beast with a trumpet in his hand, through which (putting it to his
mouth) he presently addressed us in loud, harsh, and disagreeable accents,
that, perhaps, we should have mistaken for language, had they not come
altogether through the nose.</p>
<p>"'Being thus evidently spoken to, I was at a loss how to reply, as I could
in no manner understand what was said; and in this difficulty I turned to
the porter, who was near swooning through affright, and demanded of him
his opinion as to what species of monster it was, what it wanted, and what
kind of creatures those were that so swarmed upon its back. To this the
porter replied, as well as he could for trepidation, that he had once
before heard of this sea-beast; that it was a cruel demon, with bowels of
sulphur and blood of fire, created by evil genii as the means of
inflicting misery upon mankind; that the things upon its back were vermin,
such as sometimes infest cats and dogs, only a little larger and more
savage; and that these vermin had their uses, however evil—for,
through the torture they caused the beast by their nibbling and stingings,
it was goaded into that degree of wrath which was requisite to make it
roar and commit ill, and so fulfil the vengeful and malicious designs of
the wicked genii.</p>
<p>"This account determined me to take to my heels, and, without once even
looking behind me, I ran at full speed up into the hills, while the porter
ran equally fast, although nearly in an opposite direction, so that, by
these means, he finally made his escape with my bundles, of which I have
no doubt he took excellent care—although this is a point I cannot
determine, as I do not remember that I ever beheld him again.</p>
<p>"'For myself, I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men-vermin (who had
come to the shore in boats) that I was very soon overtaken, bound hand and
foot, and conveyed to the beast, which immediately swam out again into the
middle of the sea.</p>
<p>"'I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a comfortable home to peril
my life in such adventures as this; but regret being useless, I made the
best of my condition, and exerted myself to secure the goodwill of the
man-animal that owned the trumpet, and who appeared to exercise authority
over his fellows. I succeeded so well in this endeavor that, in a few
days, the creature bestowed upon me various tokens of his favor, and in
the end even went to the trouble of teaching me the rudiments of what it
was vain enough to denominate its language; so that, at length, I was
enabled to converse with it readily, and came to make it comprehend the
ardent desire I had of seeing the world.</p>
<p>"'Washish squashish squeak, Sinbad, hey-diddle diddle, grunt unt grumble,
hiss, fiss, whiss,' said he to me, one day after dinner—but I beg a
thousand pardons, I had forgotten that your majesty is not conversant with
the dialect of the Cock-neighs (so the man-animals were called; I presume
because their language formed the connecting link between that of the
horse and that of the rooster). With your permission, I will translate.
'Washish squashish,' and so forth:—that is to say, 'I am happy to
find, my dear Sinbad, that you are really a very excellent fellow; we are
now about doing a thing which is called circumnavigating the globe; and
since you are so desirous of seeing the world, I will strain a point and
give you a free passage upon back of the beast.'"</p>
<p>When the Lady Scheherazade had proceeded thus far, relates the
"Isitsoornot," the king turned over from his left side to his right, and
said:</p>
<p>"It is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen, that you omitted,
hitherto, these latter adventures of Sinbad. Do you know I think them
exceedingly entertaining and strange?"</p>
<p>The king having thus expressed himself, we are told, the fair Scheherazade
resumed her history in the following words:</p>
<p>"Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative to the caliph—'I
thanked the man-animal for its kindness, and soon found myself very much
at home on the beast, which swam at a prodigious rate through the ocean;
although the surface of the latter is, in that part of the world, by no
means flat, but round like a pomegranate, so that we went—so to say—either
up hill or down hill all the time.'</p>
<p>"That I think, was very singular," interrupted the king.</p>
<p>"Nevertheless, it is quite true," replied Scheherazade.</p>
<p>"I have my doubts," rejoined the king; "but, pray, be so good as to go on
with the story."</p>
<p>"I will," said the queen. "'The beast,' continued Sinbad to the caliph,
'swam, as I have related, up hill and down hill until, at length, we
arrived at an island, many hundreds of miles in circumference, but which,
nevertheless, had been built in the middle of the sea by a colony of
little things like caterpillars'" (*1)</p>
<p>"Hum!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'Leaving this island,' said Sinbad—(for Scheherazade, it must be
understood, took no notice of her husband's ill-mannered ejaculation)
'leaving this island, we came to another where the forests were of solid
stone, and so hard that they shivered to pieces the finest-tempered axes
with which we endeavoured to cut them down."' (*2)</p>
<p>"Hum!" said the king, again; but Scheherazade, paying him no attention,
continued in the language of Sinbad.</p>
<p>"'Passing beyond this last island, we reached a country where there was a
cave that ran to the distance of thirty or forty miles within the bowels
of the earth, and that contained a greater number of far more spacious and
more magnificent palaces than are to be found in all Damascus and Bagdad.
From the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads of gems, like
diamonds, but larger than men; and in among the streets of towers and
pyramids and temples, there flowed immense rivers as black as ebony, and
swarming with fish that had no eyes.'" (*3)</p>
<p>"Hum!" said the king. "'We then swam into a region of the sea where we
found a lofty mountain, down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted
metal, some of which were twelve miles wide and sixty miles long (*4);
while from an abyss on the summit, issued so vast a quantity of ashes that
the sun was entirely blotted out from the heavens, and it became darker
than the darkest midnight; so that when we were even at the distance of a
hundred and fifty miles from the mountain, it was impossible to see the
whitest object, however close we held it to our eyes.'" (*5)</p>
<p>"Hum!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'After quitting this coast, the beast continued his voyage until we met
with a land in which the nature of things seemed reversed—for we
here saw a great lake, at the bottom of which, more than a hundred feet
beneath the surface of the water, there flourished in full leaf a forest
of tall and luxuriant trees.'" (*6)</p>
<p>"Hoo!" said the king.</p>
<p>"Some hundred miles farther on brought us to a climate where the
atmosphere was so dense as to sustain iron or steel, just as our own does
feather.'" (*7)</p>
<p>"Fiddle de dee," said the king.</p>
<p>"Proceeding still in the same direction, we presently arrived at the most
magnificent region in the whole world. Through it there meandered a
glorious river for several thousands of miles. This river was of
unspeakable depth, and of a transparency richer than that of amber. It was
from three to six miles in width; and its banks which arose on either side
to twelve hundred feet in perpendicular height, were crowned with
ever-blossoming trees and perpetual sweet-scented flowers, that made the
whole territory one gorgeous garden; but the name of this luxuriant land
was the Kingdom of Horror, and to enter it was inevitable death'" (*8)</p>
<p>"Humph!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'We left this kingdom in great haste, and, after some days, came to
another, where we were astonished to perceive myriads of monstrous animals
with horns resembling scythes upon their heads. These hideous beasts dig
for themselves vast caverns in the soil, of a funnel shape, and line the
sides of them with rocks, so disposed one upon the other that they fall
instantly, when trodden upon by other animals, thus precipitating them
into the monster's dens, where their blood is immediately sucked, and
their carcasses afterwards hurled contemptuously out to an immense
distance from "the caverns of death."'" (*9)</p>
<p>"Pooh!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'Continuing our progress, we perceived a district with vegetables that
grew not upon any soil but in the air. (*10) There were others that sprang
from the substance of other vegetables; (*11) others that derived their
substance from the bodies of living animals; (*12) and then again, there
were others that glowed all over with intense fire; (*13) others that
moved from place to place at pleasure, (*14) and what was still more
wonderful, we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and moved their
limbs at will and had, moreover, the detestable passion of mankind for
enslaving other creatures, and confining them in horrid and solitary
prisons until the fulfillment of appointed tasks.'" (*15)</p>
<p>"Pshaw!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'Quitting this land, we soon arrived at another in which the bees and the
birds are mathematicians of such genius and erudition, that they give
daily instructions in the science of geometry to the wise men of the
empire. The king of the place having offered a reward for the solution of
two very difficult problems, they were solved upon the spot—the one
by the bees, and the other by the birds; but the king keeping their
solution a secret, it was only after the most profound researches and
labor, and the writing of an infinity of big books, during a long series
of years, that the men-mathematicians at length arrived at the identical
solutions which had been given upon the spot by the bees and by the
birds.'" (*16)</p>
<p>"Oh my!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'We had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found ourselves close
upon another, from whose shores there flew over our heads a flock of fowls
a mile in breadth, and two hundred and forty miles long; so that, although
they flew a mile during every minute, it required no less than four hours
for the whole flock to pass over us—in which there were several
millions of millions of fowl.'" (*17)</p>
<p>"Oh fy!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us great
annoyance, than we were terrified by the appearance of a fowl of another
kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs which I met in my former
voyages; for it was bigger than the biggest of the domes on your seraglio,
oh, most Munificent of Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head that we
could perceive, but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was of a
prodigious fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance, smooth,
shining and striped with various colors. In its talons, the monster was
bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house from which it had
knocked off the roof, and in the interior of which we distinctly saw human
beings, who, beyond doubt, were in a state of frightful despair at the
horrible fate which awaited them. We shouted with all our might, in the
hope of frightening the bird into letting go of its prey, but it merely
gave a snort or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon our heads a
heavy sack which proved to be filled with sand!'"</p>
<p>"Stuff!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'It was just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of
immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which, nevertheless, was
supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue cow that had no fewer than
four hundred horns.'" (*18)</p>
<p>"That, now, I believe," said the king, "because I have read something of
the kind before, in a book."</p>
<p>"'We passed immediately beneath this continent, (swimming in between the
legs of the cow), and, after some hours, found ourselves in a wonderful
country indeed, which, I was informed by the man-animal, was his own
native land, inhabited by things of his own species. This elevated the
man-animal very much in my esteem, and in fact, I now began to feel
ashamed of the contemptuous familiarity with which I had treated him; for
I found that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most powerful
magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, (*19) which, no doubt,
served to stimulate them by their painful writhings and wrigglings to the
most miraculous efforts of imagination!'"</p>
<p>"Nonsense!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'Among the magicians, were domesticated several animals of very singular
kinds; for example, there was a huge horse whose bones were iron and whose
blood was boiling water. In place of corn, he had black stones for his
usual food; and yet, in spite of so hard a diet, he was so strong and
swift that he would drag a load more weighty than the grandest temple in
this city, at a rate surpassing that of the flight of most birds.'" (*20)</p>
<p>"Twattle!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'I saw, also, among these people a hen without feathers, but bigger than
a camel; instead of flesh and bone she had iron and brick; her blood, like
that of the horse, (to whom, in fact, she was nearly related,) was boiling
water; and like him she ate nothing but wood or black stones. This hen
brought forth very frequently, a hundred chickens in the day; and, after
birth, they took up their residence for several weeks within the stomach
of their mother.'" (*21)</p>
<p>"Fa! lal!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'One of this nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of brass and
wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity that he would have
beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with the exception of the great
Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. (*22) Another of these magi constructed (of like
material) a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it;
for so great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed
calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required the united
labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year. (*23) But a still more
wonderful conjuror fashioned for himself a mighty thing that was neither
man nor beast, but which had brains of lead, intermixed with a black
matter like pitch, and fingers that it employed with such incredible speed
and dexterity that it would have had no trouble in writing out twenty
thousand copies of the Koran in an hour, and this with so exquisite a
precision, that in all the copies there should not be found one to vary
from another by the breadth of the finest hair. This thing was of
prodigious strength, so that it erected or overthrew the mightiest empires
at a breath; but its powers were exercised equally for evil and for
good.'"</p>
<p>"Ridiculous!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'Among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in his
veins the blood of the salamanders; for he made no scruple of sitting down
to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his dinner was thoroughly
roasted upon its floor. (*24) Another had the faculty of converting the
common metals into gold, without even looking at them during the process.
(*25) Another had such a delicacy of touch that he made a wire so fine as
to be invisible. (*26) Another had such quickness of perception that he
counted all the separate motions of an elastic body, while it was
springing backward and forward at the rate of nine hundred millions of
times in a second.'" (*27)</p>
<p>"Absurd!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'Another of these magicians, by means of a fluid that nobody ever yet
saw, could make the corpses of his friends brandish their arms, kick out
their legs, fight, or even get up and dance at his will. (*28) Another had
cultivated his voice to so great an extent that he could have made himself
heard from one end of the world to the other. (*29) Another had so long an
arm that he could sit down in Damascus and indite a letter at Bagdad—or
indeed at any distance whatsoever. (*30) Another commanded the lightning
to come down to him out of the heavens, and it came at his call; and
served him for a plaything when it came. Another took two loud sounds and
out of them made a silence. Another constructed a deep darkness out of two
brilliant lights. (*31) Another made ice in a red-hot furnace. (*32)
Another directed the sun to paint his portrait, and the sun did. (*33)
Another took this luminary with the moon and the planets, and having first
weighed them with scrupulous accuracy, probed into their depths and found
out the solidity of the substance of which they were made. But the whole
nation is, indeed, of so surprising a necromantic ability, that not even
their infants, nor their commonest cats and dogs have any difficulty in
seeing objects that do not exist at all, or that for twenty millions of
years before the birth of the nation itself had been blotted out from the
face of creation."' (*34)</p>
<p>"Preposterous!" said the king.</p>
<p>"'The wives and daughters of these incomparably great and wise magi,'"
continued Scheherazade, without being in any manner disturbed by these
frequent and most ungentlemanly interruptions on the part of her husband—"'the
wives and daughters of these eminent conjurers are every thing that is
accomplished and refined; and would be every thing that is interesting and
beautiful, but for an unhappy fatality that besets them, and from which
not even the miraculous powers of their husbands and fathers has,
hitherto, been adequate to save. Some fatalities come in certain shapes,
and some in others—but this of which I speak has come in the shape
of a crotchet.'"</p>
<p>"A what?" said the king.</p>
<p>"'A crotchet'" said Scheherazade. "'One of the evil genii, who are
perpetually upon the watch to inflict ill, has put it into the heads of
these accomplished ladies that the thing which we describe as personal
beauty consists altogether in the protuberance of the region which lies
not very far below the small of the back. Perfection of loveliness, they
say, is in the direct ratio of the extent of this lump. Having been long
possessed of this idea, and bolsters being cheap in that country, the days
have long gone by since it was possible to distinguish a woman from a
dromedary-'"</p>
<p>"Stop!" said the king—"I can't stand that, and I won't. You have
already given me a dreadful headache with your lies. The day, too, I
perceive, is beginning to break. How long have we been married?—my
conscience is getting to be troublesome again. And then that dromedary
touch—do you take me for a fool? Upon the whole, you might as well
get up and be throttled."</p>
<p>These words, as I learn from the "Isitsoornot," both grieved and
astonished Scheherazade; but, as she knew the king to be a man of
scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to forfeit his word, she
submitted to her fate with a good grace. She derived, however, great
consolation, (during the tightening of the bowstring,) from the reflection
that much of the history remained still untold, and that the petulance of
her brute of a husband had reaped for him a most righteous reward, in
depriving him of many inconceivable adventures.</p>
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