to save the life or honor of maidens whom the enemy endeavored to kidnap.  The Arabs, on their part, were in close contact with the European minds, and as they helped to originate the chivalrous spirit in Europe, so they must have been in turn influenced by the developments of the troubadour spirit which culminated in such maxims as Montagnogout’s declaration that “a true lover desires a thousand times more the happiness of his beloved than his own.”  As Saadi lived in the time of the troubadours—­the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—­it was easy for him to get a knowledge of the European “ways and forms of courtship.”  In Persia itself there was no courtship or legitimate lovemaking, for the “lover” hardly ever had met his bride before the wedding-day.  Nevertheless, if we may believe William Franklin,[35] a Persian woman might command a suitor to spend all day in front of her house reciting verses in praise of her beauty; and H.C.  Trumbull naively cites, as evidence that Orientals love just as we do, the following story: 

“Morier tells ... of a large painting in a pleasure-house in Shiraz, illustrative of the treatment of a loyal lover by a heartless coquette, which is one of the popular legends of Persia.  Sheik Chenan, a Persian of the true faith, and a man of learning and consequence, fell in love with an Armenian lady of great beauty who would not marry him unless he changed his religion.  To this he agreed.  Still she would not marry him unless he would drink wine.  This scruple also he yielded.  She resisted still, unless he consented to eat pork.  With this also he complied.  Still she was coy, and refused to fulfil her engagement, unless he would be contented to drive swine before her.  Even this condition he accepted.  She then told him that she would not have him at all, and laughed at him for his pains.  The picture represents the coquette at her window, laughing at Sheik Chenan as he is driving his pigs before her.”

This story suggests and may have been invented in imitation of the foolish and capricious tests to which mediaeval dames in Europe put their quixotic knights.  Few of these knights, as I have said elsewhere (R.L.P.B., 100), “were so manly as the one in Schiller’s ballad, who, after fetching his lady’s glove from the lion’s den, threw it in her face,” to show how his feelings toward her had changed.  If the Persian in Trumbull’s story had been manly and refined enough to be capable of genuine love, his feelings toward a woman who could wantonly subject him to such persistent insults and degradation, would have turned into contempt.  Ordinary sensual infatuation, on the other hand, would be quite strong enough and unprincipled enough to lead a man to sacrifice religion, honor, and self-respect, for a capricious woman.  This kind of self-sacrifice is not a test of true love, for it is not altruistic.  The sheik did not make his sacrifice to benefit the woman he coveted, but to benefit himself, as he saw no other way of gratifying his own selfish desires.[36]