A soldier finds a purse of gold on the highway, and entrusts it to the keeping of a goldsmith (how frequently do goldsmiths figure in these stories—­and never to the credit of the craft!), but when he comes to demand it back the other denies all knowledge of it.  The soldier cites him before the kazi, but he still persists in denying that he had ever received any money from the complainant.  The kazi was, however, convinced of the truth of the soldier’s story, so he goes to the house of the goldsmith, and privately causes two of his own attendants to be locked up in a large chest that was in one of the rooms.  He then confines the goldsmith and his wife in the same room.  During the night the concealed men hear the goldsmith inform his wife where he had hidden the soldier’s money; and next morning, when the kazi comes again and is told by his men what they had heard the goldsmith say to his wife about the money, he causes search to be made, and, finding it, hangs the goldsmith on the spot.

* * * * *

Kazis are often represented in Persian stories as being very shrewd and ingenious in convicting the most expert rogues, but this device for discovering the goldsmith’s criminality is certainly one of the cleverest examples.

* * * * *

On the 36th Night of MS. (26th of Kadiri) the loquacious bird relates the story of

The King who died of Love for a Merchant’s beautiful Daughter.

A merchant had a daughter, the fame of whose beauty drew many suitors for her hand, but he rejected them all; and when she was of proper age he wrote a letter to the king, describing her charms and accomplishments, and respectfully offering her to him in marriage.  The king, already in love with the damsel from this account of her beauty, sends his four vazirs to the merchant’s house to ascertain whether she was really as charming as her father had represented her to be.  They find that she far surpassed the power of words to describe; but, considering amongst themselves that should the king take this bewitching girl to wife, he would become so entangled in the meshes of love as totally to neglect the affairs of the state, they underrate her beauty to the king, who then gives up all thought of her.  But it chanced one day that the king himself beheld the damsel on the terrace of her house, and, perceiving that his vazirs had deceived him, he sternly reprimanded them, at the same time expressing his fixed resolution of marrying the girl.  The vazirs frankly confessed that their reason for misrepresenting the merchant’s daughter to him was their fear lest, possessing such a charming bride, he should forget his duty to the state; upon which the king, struck with their anxiety for his true interests, resolved to deny himself the happiness of marrying the girl.  But he could not suppress his affection for her:  he fell sick, and soon after died, the victim of love.