[FN#485] Most Arabs believe that the black cloud which sometimes produces, besides famine, contagious fevers and pestilence, like that which in 1799 depopulated the cities and country of Barbary, is led by a king locust, the Sultan Jarad.

[FN#486] The text is hopelessly corrupt, and we have no other with which to collate.  Apparently a portion of the tale has fallen out, making a non-sens of its ending, which suggests that the kite gobbled up the two locusts at her ease, and left the falcon to himself.

[FN#487] The lines have occurred in vol. i. 265.  I quote Mr. Payne.

[FN#488] The fabliau is a favourite in the East; this is the third time it has occurred with minor modifications.  Of course the original was founded on fact, and the fact was and is by no means uncommon.

[FN#489] This would hardly be our Western way of treating a proposal of the kind; nor would the European novelist neglect so grand an opportunity for tall-talk.

[FN#490] This is a rechauffe of “The House with the Belvedere;” see vol. vi. 188.

[FN#491] Arab.  “Masturah,"=veiled, well-guarded, confined in the Harem.

[FN#492] Arab. “’Ajuz nahs"=an old woman so crafty that she was a calamity to friends and foes.

[FN#493] Here, as in many places the text is painfully concise:  the crone says only, “The Wuzu for the prayer!”

[FN#494] I have followed Mr. Payne who supplies this sentence to make the Tale run smoothly.

[FN#495] i.e. the half of the marriage-settlement due to the wife on divorcement and whatever monies he may have borrowed of her.

[FN#496] Here we find the vulgar idea of a rape, which is that a man can, by mere force, possess a woman against her will.  I contend that this is impossible unless he use drugs like chloroform or violence, so as to make the patient faint or she be exceptionally weak.  “Good Queen Bess” hit the heart of the question when she bade Lord High Chancellor sheath his sword, she holding the scabbard-mouth before him and keeping it in constant motion.  But it often happens that the woman, unless she have a loathing for her violator, becomes infected with the amorous storge, relaxes her defense, feels pleasure in the outer contact of the parts and almost insensibly allows penetration and emission.  Even conception is possible in such cases as is proved in that curious work, “The Curiosities of Medical Experience.”

[FN#497] i.e. thou wilt have satisfied us all three.

[FN#498] Here I follow Mr. Payne who has skilfully fine-drawn the holes in the original text.

[FN#499] See vol. vii. 363; ix. 238.

[FN#500] Arab.  “Musalla,” which may be either a praying carpet, a pure place in a house, or a small chapel like that near Shiraz which Hafiz immortalised,

“Bring, boy, the sup that’s in the cup; in highest Heaven man ne’er shall find Such watery marge as Ruknabad, MusalIa’s mazes rose entwined.”