[FN#160] Another version of this tale is given in the Bresl.  Edit. (vol. viii. pp. 273-8:  Night 675-6).  It is the “Story of the King and the Virtuous Wife” in the Book of Sindibad.  In the versions Arabic and Greek (Syntipas) the King forgets his ring; in the Hebrew Mishle Sandabar, his staff, and his sandals in the old Spanish Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres.

[FN#161] One might fancy that this is Biblical, Bathsheba and Uriah.  But such “villanies” must often have occurred in the East, at different times and places, without requiring direct derivation.  The learned Prof.  H. H. Wilson was mistaken in supposing that these fictions “originate in the feeling which has always pervaded the East unfavourable to the dignity of women.”  They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the sexes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while AEsop’s fable of the Lion and the Man also explains their frequency.

[FN#162] The European form of the tale is “Toujours perdrix,” a sentence often quoted but seldom understood.  It is the reproach of M. l’Abbe when the Count (proprietor of the pretty Countess) made him eat partridge every day for a month; on which the Abbe says, “Alway partridge is too much of a good thing!” Upon this text the Count speaks.  A correspondent mentions that it was told by Horace Walpole concerning the Confessor of a French King who reproved him for conjugal infidelities.  The degraded French (for “toujours de la perdrix” or “des perdrix”) suggests a foreign origin.  Another friend refers me to No. x. of the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles” (compiled in A.D. 1432 for the amusement of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis xi.) whose chief personage “un grand seigneur du Royaulme d’Angleterre,” is lectured upon fidelity by the lord’s mignon, a “jeune et gracieux gentil homme de son hostel.”  Here the partridge became pastes d’anguille.  Possibly Scott refers to it in Redgauntlet (chapt. iv.); “One must be very fond of partridge to accept it when thrown in one’s face.”  Did not Voltaire complain at Potsdam of “toujours perdrix” and make it one of his grievances?  A similar story is that of the chaplain who, weary of the same diet, uttered “grace” as follows:—­

Rabbits hot, rabbits cold,
Rabbits tender, and rabbits tough,
Rabbits young, and rabbits old
I thank the Lord I’ve had enough.

And I as cordially thank my kind correspondents.

[FN#163] The great legal authority of the realm.

[FN#164] In all editions the Wazir here tells the Tale of the Merchant’s Wife and the Parrot which, following Lane, I have transferred to vol. i. p. 52.  But not to break the tradition I here introduce the Persian version of the story from the “Book of Sindibad.”  In addition to the details given in the note to vol. i., 52 {Vol1, FN#90}; I may quote the two talking-birds left to watch over his young