but you would not believe my words.  Who, then, is to blame?” Upon this the kazi began to cool, and said so the dyer, “I must tell you, friend Omar, that this morning there came to me a most beautiful damsel, who pretended that you were her father, and that you represented her to everybody as a monster, on purpose to deter all suitors that came to ask her in marriage.”  “My lord,” answered the dyer, “this beautiful damsel must be an impostor; some one, undoubtedly, owes you a grudge.”  Then the kazi, having reflected for a few minutes, said to the dyer, “Bid the porter carry thy daughter home again.  Keep the thousand sequins of gold which I gave thee, but ask no more of me, if thou desirest that we should continue friends.”  The dyer, knowing the implacable disposition of the kazi, thought it advisable to content himself with what he had already gained, and the kazi, having formally divorced his hideous bride, sent her away with her father.  The affair soon got wind in the city and everybody was highly diverted with the trick practiced on the kazi.

It will be observed that in the Arabian story there are two clever devices:  that of the lady who tricks the boastful merchant, whose motto was that men’s craft is superior to women’s craft, into marrying the ugly daughter of the kazi; and that of the merchant to get rid of his bad bargain by disgusting the kazi with the alliance.  The scene at the house of the worthy judge—­ the crowd of low rascals piping, drumming, and capering, and felicitating themselves on their pretended kinsman the merchant’s marriage—­is highly humorous.  This does not occur in the Persian story, because it is the kazi, who has been duped into marrying the dyer’s deformed daughter, and she is therefore simply packed off again to her father’s house.

That the tales of the “Thousand and One Days” are not (as is supposed by the writer of an article on the several English versions of The Nights in the “Edinburgh Review” for July 1886, p. 167) mere imitations of Galland[FN#596] is most certain, apart from the statement in the preface to Petis’ French translation, which there is no reason to doubt—­see vol. x. of The Nights, p. 166, note 1.  Sir William Ouseley, in his Travels, vol. ii., p. 21, note, states that he brought from Persia a manuscript which comprised, inter alia, a portion of the “Hazar u Yek Ruz,” or the Thousand and One Days, which agreed with Petis’ translation of the same stories.  In the Persian collection entitled “Shamsa u Kuhkuha” occur several of the tales and incidents, for example, the Story of Nasiraddoli King of Mousel, the Merchant of Baghdad, and the Fair Zeinib, while the Story of the King of Thibet and the Princess of the Naimans has its parallel in the Turkish “Kirk Vazir,” or Forty Vazirs.  Again, the Story of Couloufe and the Beautiful Dilara reminds us of that of Haji the Cross-grained in Malcolm’s “Sketches of Persia.”  But of the French translation not a single good word can be said—­the